


Ere Break of Day

by squire



Series: Children of the Soulmark [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: (not so very) unrequited love, Angst, Developing Relationship, Dwarven Culture and Customs, Enemies to Lovers, Erebor never fell, Hair Braiding, Hate Sex, Hobbit folk songs, Misunderstandings, Multi, Pre-Quest, Romance, Rough Sex, Soulmates AU, Timeline What Timeline, UST, Until It Did, accidental nudity, canonical minor character deaths, innuendos, saucy songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those romantically inclined would say that the soulmarks were perhaps Fate’s way to ensure that people meant to accomplish great things would enter this world at the right time, thus marking their parents so they wouldn’t miss each other in their youth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Children of the Soul Mark

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the mithril-level betareader and first appreciator of this work, Mildred Bobbin :)
> 
> AN: This is an AU, and it's not following the canonical timeline. Various characters will appear in the story with their ages different from what they are in the books/movies.

 

Soulmarks weren’t common amongst the Hobbits. A few, scattered throughout the Shire, popped up every other generation, and there was always Took blood to be found in the veins of those who bore one. A strange heritage of an even stranger dalliance of one of their ancestors with a fairy, such was the most favourite speculation off the rumour mill. Soulmarks were rare and extraordinary, and the Hobbits, sensible folk that they were, didn’t bother with it much.

For why should one turn a blind eye to all the other young lads or lasses just because they wore a single person’s name on their wrist? A mere marking couldn’t seal one’s fate. Love didn’t sprout full grown and winged between two soulmates as soon as they laid eyes on each other – it still was a fragile seed that needed care to bloom. Courting was a serious and respectable affair, and when it sometimes turned flat, when the spark couldn’t be fanned into a steady flame, when the pair of soulmates decided they would rather remain friends for life, no ill will reigned between the families. “Letters on skin alone don‘t make hearth and home,” the elders would mutter around the stems of their pipes and nod to themselves, wisdom and Old Toby like clouds around their heads, “and they certainly won’t keep your pantry full.”

Besides, it was said that taking a soulmate for a spouse often resulted in extraordinary things happening to your children. Which would be a preposterous notion, of course, if the evidence accumulated through the years didn’t point to it so obviously. Isumbras III, the Thain of Tooks, bore the soulmark of his wife, and would often blame it for the expenses he had to spend on clothing for his stupidly overgrown son Brandobras. It was a rather short-sighted complaint, as it turned out eventually, for after the Battle of Greenfields, every tailor in the Shire saw it as their personal honour to make the finest shirts and waistcoat for the blessedly tall Hobbit who slew the King of the Goblins.

Another remarkable Took, old Gerontius, would often show off his wrist adorned with a neatly written Adamanta Chubb across the veins. Many believed that the record number of offspring Gerontius and Adamanta brought to this world – twelve in all – was a direct consequence of it. Others (because there never was only one line of gossip regarding any given topic in the Shire, honestly, what would be the point of gossip if not in sharing different theories, comparing them, arguing over them, and ultimately embellishing them for further percolation?) would murmur that those nine Took lads were all right, if a bit too many, but it was those three wild daughters who caused the most trouble. Take that young Belladonna, gallivanting around with Rangers and making friends with the Elves of Rivendell!

Those romantically inclined would say that the soulmarks were perhaps Fate’s way to ensure that people meant to accomplish great things would enter this world at the right time, thus marking their parents so they wouldn’t miss each other in their youth.

But for the most part, Shirefolk were not romantically inclined. The small people loved their simple lives, far and safe from any adventures and great deeds, with little regard for the happenings in the wide world. The prospect of children destined to play a significant role in the grand scheme of things began to be viewed rather as an obstacle to marital happiness than as a privilege granted by the Valar themselves. It went so far that choosing the other part of your soul for a lifemate was seen as a social disadvantage amongst the more respectable gentlehobbits. In the end, it only ever made for the disturbance of peace.

So it happened that when Belladonna’s son Bilbo was born with a strange scribbling resembling crow’s feet on his tiny wrist, a strange foreboding settled itself deep within his father’s heart: that his son, the only heir to the reputable Baggins name, would one day want to meet this not-Hobbit (for as illegible the name currently was, it was clearly no Hobbit name) and he would run off on an adventure to whatever land an whichever people used such inelegant lettering.

 

*

 

“Or we could simply ask someone. There’s plenty of Dwarves passing through Bree–”

“They won’t tell you a thing, dearest. Not a hint. Secret language, sacred script, doesn’t matter that they engrave their initials on every ware they sell, they won’t translate it to a Hobbit.”

“We could take him to Rivendell. I’m sure Lord Elrond can read every script on Arda.”

Bungo had long ago adopted the decision not to get jealous of the Master of the Last Homely House, so he merely rolled his eyes and carried on.

“Or we could let sleeping dogs lie. Who needs a soulmark to be happy? Look at us – I couldn’t love you more than I already do, even if I had your name across my wrist.”

“Oh darling, that’s so... Perfidious! You foul man, trying to sweet talk me when I want a serious discussion!”

Fifteen year old Bilbo rolled his eyes and sneaked out of the back door of Bag End to spare himself another of his parents’ arguments. Billing and cooing doves as they were for most of the time, Bilbo’s peculiar soulmark was the only source of disagreement between them. At this age, it was already clear that the letters were Dwarvish, and Belladonna insisted that they should take the initiative and find out whose name it was. Bungo didn’t like the prospect one bit. No Dwarves lived anywhere decently near the Shire, apart from those ever-travelling merchants or peregrine blacksmiths wandering from one town to another – and just thinking about their nomadic life was making Bungo’s stomach turn.

Anyway, Bilbo was still too young. Not even in his tweens. Plenty of time to have a proper look into the matters when he came of age. Moreover, didn’t Dwarves age differently? Bilbo’s other part could be walking the Middle Earth for decades already. Why can’t they show a little effort and come here to find Bilbo? They shouldn’t have any problem with reading Westron! Honestly, by now Bilbo could recite all his father’s favourite points by heart, the crown jewel of his argumentation always consisting of –

“And, say, how do we know if the Dwarves even have soulmates?”

“Why, my dear Bungo, they most certainly have.”

Bilbo froze with one foot in the air and his hand on the garden door latch. That booming voice carrying from inside of their home... he heard it before! Could it be...?

“Gandalf!” The exclamation of his mother’s unfeigned enthusiasm, accompanied by delighted clapping of her hands, was almost – almost – loud enough to cover his father’s groan of exasperation.

“Welcome, welcome, old friend! Give me that hat – tea will be ready in a jiffy – sorry, we’ve been rather preoccupied, I didn’t hear you come in!”

“I didn’t hear you knock on the door,” yes, and that was his father, enforcing his resolve not to be annoyed by another example of the vast array of Belladonna’s ill-mannered friends. Bilbo discarded his plans on raiding the Old Took’s orchard and tiptoed back to sit under the parlour window.

Which was, unfortunately, a place well within reach of Gandalf’s suspiciously accurate staff.

“Bilbo. What did I tell you about eavesdropping?” His father scolded him after he was dragged by the collar through the window and plopped on the fourth chair at the table.

“It’s not eavesdropping when it’s concerning me!” Bilbo objected and rubbed his smarting ear.

“I keep telling you he’s still too young for this–”

“Now, now.” Gandalf nipped another argument in the bud, shook out the sleeves of his robe and levelled both Baggins parents with a jovial look. “What’s this all about Dwarves and soulmarks?”

“Eavesdropping,” intoned Bungo nonchalantly.

Bilbo mentally adjusted his opinion on his father. Talking back to one of the Big Folk! To a Wizard! Bilbo was impressed by his parent, which was quite a feat. 

“Well, I’m afraid the entirety of Bag Shot Row were unwilling participants in this unbecoming behaviour. The sound carries, especially through open windows.” Gandalf’s eyes twinkled and he blew at the hot, fragrant liquid Belladonna brought him in her best sauce-boat. Tea cups were just too small for him.

“It’s Bilbo’s soulmark,” she explained, sitting down and straightening her skirts. Under her stern gaze, Bilbo sighed and extended his arm for examination. “It’s in Dwarvish, and we can’t read it. Do you know what it says?”

Gandalf took Bilbo’s hand, bent the wrist this way and that, drew back the grey curtain of his hair on one side to get better light, frowned, huffed, sipped on his tea, hummed and clicked his tongue, and when Bilbo thought he would soon burst out of his skin before he bore another second of this, the wizard glanced down at Belladonna with his most benign smile and said: “Yes, I can read it.”

“And?” chimed the three-voiced harmony from around the table.

The wizard looked unfairly pleased with himself for having such a rapt audience. “It says, Thorin Oakenshield.”

Both Bungo and Belladonna moved their lips silently, testing the name on their tongues. Bilbo snagged his hand back, wishing for the thousandth time that the blasted letters would just disappear, and then he noticed the strange look on the wizard’s face. It was... turned inwards. Bilbo knew that look. Old Gerontius looked exactly like that – minus the long beard, of course – at his last birthday party after he ate one sausage too many and then for a second he couldn’t decide if the last bite was going to stay in or make a repeated curtain call. Since there couldn’t be anything wrong with his mother’s tea, Bilbo drew the only other possible conclusion.

“You’re keeping something to yourself.”

“Oh, why would I do that?” Oh, but Bilbo was fifteen, and at this age you can tell when a smile has just that much teeth to be really well-meaning. ‘Get down from my apple tree and nothing will happen to you,’ he’d heard that, seen that same smile, and then felt the consequences on his backside enough times to not believe it.

“You’ve heard that name before.”

Gandalf raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes, nodding sadly. It made him look very gracious, Bilbo was going to give him that, even when accepting his defeat.

“I know of someone by the name of Thorin, yes. Though I am not so sure about the Oakenshield part. Dwarves gain their names in battle, and Thorin is still young. But who knows how much has changed since the last time I’ve been to Erebor.”

“Erebor?” Bungo asked at the same time that Bilbo blurted, “And is this Thorin... pretty?”

“Bilbo!”

“I’d say so, in a Dwarvish sort of way,” Gandalf chuckled. “Hair as black as a starless night, and a beard to match–”

“Beard?!”

“Dwarf women are known to grow beards, boy,” Belladonna soothed him. Gandalf laughed a bit louder. With a bit more strain.

“Thorin is a Prince of the line of Durin, and the heir to the Throne of Erebor, the mightiest and wealthiest of Dwarven kingdoms in Middle Earth. And he’s a he. A Dwarf.”

Bungo carefully and in complete silence rose from his chair, went to the kitchen, came back with the tea pot and two tea cups, poured into each a half-full, and looked expectantly at his wife. Belladonna obligingly produced a small flask from a hidden pocket under her skirts and topped up the cups with something that smelled far stronger than it looked. Bungo then sat back down, still perfectly collected and reserved, and inclined his head towards Gandalf to indicate that yes, now he’s properly equipped to deal with that nonsense.

“You know, it’s not unheard-of,” Belladonna said, her quick mind as usual considering the practicalities. “My great-great aunt on father’s side had the same thing happen to her, and she became best friends with the lass, godmothers to each other’s children and all that.”

“I’m sure your great-great aunt didn’t have the name of an outlandish Princess on her wrist,” Bungo chortled a little. “Where on Arda is Erebor, anyway?”

“Oh, to the East from here, across the Misty Mountains and over the Greenwood–” Belladonna answered easily before she realised that she ought to keep her mouth shut, judging by the way Bungo’s eyes bulged out of his head at the mention of the Misty Mountains.

Bilbo was still trying to wrap his head around it. Needless to say, Gandalf wasn’t helping.

“I should mention that Dwarves hold the soulmarks in highest regard. Their women are few, and their lives are often long and lonesome, so when a Dwarf is so blessed to find the other part of his soul, he loves them in full.”

Bilbo, to his own dismay, felt his face heat up with the beginnings of a blush. “So he would want to marry me?”

“Scandalous,” Bungo murmured into his cup. Belladonna cleared her throat and tapped her foot under the table.

“What?”

“My dear husband, if you’re about to imply that there’s anything wrong with love in any form, then you should have been a little quieter about your rather racy affair with Rorimac Brandybuck the summer before you started courting me.”

“Dad!” Bilbo exclaimed, mortified to the tips of his ears, which were quickly turning scarlet. He was a teen, he was equally fascinated and disgusted by the affairs of the flesh, and as every teen, he was quite willing to believe the theory about storks delivering babies where his own parents were concerned. Even though he knew that he was the living proof that said parents must have – at some point in their life, at least once – done... that.

Belladonna turned to him just as brusquely. “And you, young man, should find a better place for your canoodling with young Merimac than our vineyard, which happens to be in direct line of sight of the kitchen window, thank you very much.”

Bilbo’s ears gave up on scarlet in favour of crimson.

“This is the Belladonna I know,” Gandalf muttered into his whiskers and both Baggins men glared at him from their respective places.

“Try to look on the bright side,” Belladonna ventured after a few moments of bewildered, wound-licking silence.

“Is there any, I wonder?”

“If Bilbo is going to become a hus…. a companion,” Belladonna corrected herself out of pity for her son’s obvious discomfort, “Of a Dwarvish prince, at least he won’t have to worry about what would happen to their children. Seeing as there won’t be any.”

Gandalf’s eyebrows climbed higher. “Worry? For what reason?”

Bungo rubbed his forehead. “It’s the thing about soulmark marriages. The children always have the most… extraordinary things happen to them.”

“My parents are soulmates,” Belladonna added with pride, completely disregarding the common Shire opinion on soulmarks.

“And you think that explains your many adventures?” Gandalf’s eyes shone with amusement. “I don’t believe that this… occurence could be a law of nature. Look at Bilbo - about to have the greatest adventure that ever happened to a Shire Hobbit and I don’t see any marks on your wrists.”

Bungo snorted. “It’s true. I dread to think what greater adventure Bilbo’s children could have, seeing as travelling all the way across the Mountains to woo a Prince is already a stupendous folly.”

“You have a point there,” Belladonna amended, “Bilbo is still too young for such a journey.”

“I’d say Bilbo is still too young for a wedding!”

“And I would say,” Gandalf waded in, “that Bilbo is still too young to decide for himself.”

“Thank you, Gandalf,” Bilbo piped up and decided that hard knocking staff or not, Gandalf was going to become his great friend.  

 

 


	2. The Grey Chaperone

 

Belladonna wasn’t soulbound to her husband; yet her candle snuffed itself out quietly, barely two months after Bungo passed on. Young Bilbo Baggins was left with a splendid smial and enough yearly income on his hands to live comfortably to the end of his days, and a silence around the dining table so loud that it drove him out for a walk far too often for his neighbours liking.

He would wander the woodland paths of Buckland, often venturing as far as the edges of the Old Forest, listening to the low groaning of ageing wood from the forest depths and staring off into the distance where the Great East Road disappeared into the gloom, sometimes foreboding, sometimes taunting, but always calling. It was like looking down from the highest point of the Brandywine Bridge, the arch built by Dwarrows in ancient times, large enough that a little Hobbit leaning across the banisters would hear the call of the deep, daring him to lean farther and succumbing to that dreadful sucking force of the void. Unnamed dangers lay that way, horrifying and alluring all at once, and if Bilbo was walking somewhat faster than usual on his way home, it was because he didn’t want anyone see him running.

“I still maintain that it’s a folly,” his father had told him before the fever had sent him to a sleep from which he didn’t wake in the morning. “A simple gentlehobbit to ask the hand of the Prince of a Kingdom? Pah! But look here, my boy – I once thought that I was quite the fool daring to ask for the hand of the marvellous Belladonna Took.”

Mother was visiting her parents that day, and Bungo winked at his son. His brow was hot to the touch but the hand that squeezed Bilbo’s own was cold and frail like frost-coated twigs in their garden, buried deep under the snow.

“’Good luck in taming her,’ my cousins kept laughing at me. But I never wanted to. Why would you tame something so beautiful? A wood lark flitting among the trees, feed it and it’ll keep coming back to you with the sweetest song, but clip its wings once and it’ll never sing again.”

Bilbo brought a cup of tea to his father’s dry lips.

“’She lived with Men and Elves, your hobbit-hole won’t be grand enough to keep her even if you panelled it with gold,’ they kept warning me. But I never wanted to keep her... I was building a nest, something for her to fly off and come back to. Not a golden cage.”

“You would want me to go to him, Dad?”

“Bilbo, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be going no matter what I say.”

 

*

 

Belladonna was even more straightforward.

“So you can be perfectly happy without your soulmate, of course. But, wouldn’t it be a pity never to know how happy you could be with him?”

She was shaking with a cough, that evening when they spoke by the fireplace, thinner and paler than she ever was, looking older by twenty years instead of two months. Just a spring cold, the herb healer had said, chicken broth and honeyed tea and you’ll be right as rain in a fortnight. Bilbo knew better. He cared for his mother’s health every way he could think of but her will to live was seeping away like water through a sieve. His parents only ever wanted him to be happy, and now when his mother couldn’t find any comfort in living, Bilbo supposed it was his turn to grow up and not beg her to stay here for him.

Even though it hurt, thinking of being alone. Only that he didn’t have to be alone, did he...?

“What if he doesn’t like me, Mam?”

Bilbo was almost thirty now. Fifteen long years had passed since the day he learned the name of the Dwarf he was supposed to love; fifteen years of nervous fits whenever he caught news of Dwarves spotted on the East Road, torn between the urge to crawl under his bed and to run towards them to meet his... his…

His other half. Who never came.

Perhaps Thorin was not of age yet, like Bilbo. Perhaps he didn’t know where to search for the likes of a Bilbo Baggins. Perhaps he never heard of the Shire. Or he could be betrothed from the day of his birth to some Dwarven Princess. Bilbo could imagine that the politics of the mightiest Dwarven kingdom on Arda didn’t need to make room for Hobbits very often.

“Think of it as an adventure,” his mother smiled, unfocused eyes staring into the flames.

“Tell me about your adventures, Mam.” Yes, Bilbo has grown up, but he would never say no to one more evening of sitting at his mother’s feet.

“Do you know which one was the biggest of them all?”

Bilbo shook his head.

“Building a home with your father.”

Her soft gaze passed over the walls of their smial, littered with evidence of years of happiness and devotion. The maps from her travels hung up in frames Bungo made for her. Dried flowers, pressed in between the pages of love letters. A chest of drawers with her finest doily on top and scratches at the legs where Bilbo crashed into it with his wooden horse when he was three.

“The most important thing about adventures is that you have a home to come back to when they end.”

It almost sounded as if Bungo was encouraging him to go, and Belladonna was wishing him to stay, which was completely the opposite of what Bilbo expected of his parents. It took him nearly three years of staring down the East Road and resisting the pull on his heart before he finally understood what they both had meant.

 

*

 

If you asked any good Hobbit of the Shire, throwing a grand party on one’s birthday was a must. To not celebrate the anniversary of the day your existence graced the face of Arda amongst the hordes of your relatives, regiments of tables, and mountains of food was equal to a social suicide. The more well-off the birthday celebrant, the higher the expectations for the lavishness of the party; but there was grandness, and then there was extravagance.

In truth, the good Hobbits of the Shire should have learned long ago that to expect nothing short of extravagance when it came to Mad Baggins of Bag End.

Fireworks, imagine that! It was perfectly all right on the Midsummer Eve celebration, but the birthday party of one individual? But as long as the ale was excellent (and it was) and the presents numerous (and they were), Bilbo’s fellow Hobbits were quite willing to forgive him for flaunting his wealth in everyone’s face like that.

Bilbo cast a quick surveying glance at the ever-diminishing loads of food on the tables, waved cheerfully at the few Hobbits whose attention wasn’t riveted on their plates, and sat down heavily, propping his sore feet on the free chair next to his honoured guest.

“I bet they thought they saw the last of you after my mother’s funeral,” Bilbo remarked, jerking his shoulder in the direction of several disapproving frowns from other tables. It wasn’t the most tactful thing he could say, but Bilbo wasn’t in the mood to pretend to be overjoyed at the sight of Gandalf, the Grey Wizard and the Disturber of Peace, who came and went as he pleased and whose pointy hat hadn’t been seen in Bag End for three very long and very lonesome years.

“It’s not Wizard business, looking after fauntlings,” Gandalf grumbled in a voice that indicated that he was, in fact, a little sorry for not being there for his friend. Bilbo pursed his mouth and lifted his chin, feeling a bit better. He was an adult now, officially so, and he knew enough of his old friend not to be truly cross with him. Such was the nature of Wizards, he mused, and Gandalf had always showed a surprising amount of consideration for simple Hobbit affairs despite being apparently older than the Shire and probably immortal to boot.

“It’s just...” Bilbo sighed. “I would have liked a bit of peace disturbing.”

Gandalf brushed a few crumbs of rhubarb crumble off his beard and hummed in contentment. Bilbo smirked to himself at the discovery that the Wizard had a sweet tooth.

“I wonder now, Bilbo... what are you still doing in the Shire?”

Bilbo shrugged. “Coming of age.” He indicated the entirety of the party in one sweeping gesture. “Which I’ve done today. My father wouldn’t want me to go before I was of age–” at this, Gandalf snorted, but Bilbo pressed on, “–and besides, if anything happened to me on the journey before I could legally make a will, my home would go to my next of kin, and I guess Mam would be tweaking my ears for eternity in Yavanna’s garden if I ever let the Sackville-Bagginses set foot in Bag End as its masters.”

“Who’s been your legal guardian up to now?”

“Old Gerontius,” Bilbo replied. “He won’t be making a fuss; he raised my mother after all.”

They sipped their ale and munched on their servings of crumble in a companionable bubble of silence amidst the babble and cheer of the party.

“And you’re wrong about Dad,” Bilbo added after a while. “I know he was easy to underestimate, he was a Baggins after all, and – and I think Mam was the only one who never underestimated him...” Bilbo trailed off and then shuddered, shaking off the maudlin thoughts like dog scrambling out of the water. “That said, yes, he wasn’t excited about the prospect, but if it were him... I believe he would have gone.”

“It’s your soulmark, Bilbo.” Gandalf finished his dessert and was rummaging his pockets for his pipeweed pouch. “You shouldn’t base your life decisions on your parents’ last wishes.”

“You know,” Bilbo contemplated, “I think that if I didn’t go, my last regret on my deathbed would be that I didn’t give it a try. It’s not like, I mean–” and he paused, trying to organise his thoughts, “I can always come back home, right?”

Gandalf smiled, crinkles around his eyes deepening. “Bad End certainly won’t be going anywhere, Bilbo. But there’s a thing about adventures... even when you make it back, you won’t be the same.”

“I’m the Shire’s confirmed bachelor at thirty-three, I can hardly get any worse.” Bilbo forced out a laugh to dispel the chill creeping up his spine from Gandalf’s warning. Around them, his friends and neighbours were tucking away pastries, gulping down ale, barking and cheering at each other, laughing and dancing and stealing kisses when they thought nobody was looking. And as often as not during those last three years, Bilbo found himself watching from the midst of it and yet from the outside, the collective enjoyment passing around him like water around a boulder, never quite sweeping him off his feet and into the stream of merriment. No. It truly couldn’t get any worse.

“Thanks for your concern, Gandalf, I mean it, but I’ve decided: next spring, as soon as the earth is not too cold to sleep on, I shall be setting off to Erebor.”

“Well then,” Gandalf nodded. “I hope you’ll do me the honour of letting me accompany you on the journey.” The corners of his mouth twitched and Bilbo mirrored the movement before bursting into a hearty laugh.

“The honour! Letting you! Oh you batty Wizard, as if I could do anything to stop you if you had the mind to go with me!”

“It’s the least I can do for Belladonna Took’s son,” Gandalf shrugged, innocence dripping from the tips of his whiskers. “Besides, you can’t go about courting a Dwarf without a chaperone.”

“Hmmm. Looking after fauntlings is not Wizard business, but chaperoning them suddenly is?” Bilbo side-eyed his friend, trying to read as much as he could of the face visible between the beard and the bushy eyebrows, which, admittedly, wasn’t much. Most of it was taken up by Gandalf’s nose, which was the unforgiving hawk-like beak of Big Folk, good for sticking its point into everyone else’s business but not nearly as eloquent as the twitchy button-like sort Hobbits were used to having between their eyes.

“You have your own agenda in mind, don’t you?”

Gandalf puffed out a perfect circle of smoke and watched it grow and disperse over the heads of the party guests, not even bothering to meet Bilbo’s eyes.

“Fine,” Bilbo snorted. “Keep your secrets. I’m sure I don’t want to know, anyway.”

Gandalf hummed and then he leaned closer to Bilbo, muttering the next question so Bilbo stood at least a slight chance of staying in his fellow Hobbits’ good graces:

“There’s still the Man-sized bed in one of your guest-bedrooms, isn’t there?”

Bilbo gave him an almost hurt look, raising his voice to make it clear that he didn’t have a care for what his neighbours might have to say as to whom Bilbo housed in Bag End.

“Of course there is! I’ve aired it and dusted it just last week.” In truth, Bilbo had been airing that room and putting on fresh bed linen every week since his parents died, but he wasn’t planning on telling that to Gandalf. But yet, from the tiniest apologetic smile Gandalf gave him Bilbo realised he didn’t need to.

“Then I’ll be staying a few weeks, if you don’t mind,” Gandalf said solemnly. Bilbo laughed in sheer delight. Did he mind? Not in the leastest least!

“Good,” Gandalf laughed too, when Bilbo told him so. “Dwarven courtship is not all flowers and family recipes, you understand. We’ve got work to do, before you’ll be ready to go.”

 

*

 

_Six months later_

 

“Are you sure it’ll be enough?” Bilbo adjusted the strap of his saddle pack and frowned, fussing about the contents of it for the umpteenth time. “I should’ve pawned my mother’s silverware for more coin, it’ll be killing two birds with one stone as I’m sure Lobelia will try to break in through the back door and make off with them as soon as we’re behind the road turn–”

“Don’t fret, Bilbo,” Gandalf told him from the heights of his riding horse. “We have enough to last us for our journey and even to make it a comfortable one, within the bounds of possibility of course.”

“I just wouldn’t want to show up at the gates to Erebor looking like a beggar,” Bilbo muttered defiantly.

“As to that,” Gandalf sighed, “dear Bilbo, even if you sold the entirety of Bag End and spent it on courting gifts, it would still be a mere drop in a bucket when compared to the wealth of Erebor. You can’t win this by counting your gold. If we are to be successful this will need to be handled with tact, and respect, and no small degree of charm, which is why I am accompanying you.”

Bilbo glared at him and then mounted his pony. He’d practiced riding as soon as the last remnants of snow melted from the pastures but the hard saddle still proved to be a sore trial for his thighs at the end of the day. He clicked his tongue, wriggled his bum to get better accustomed to the jostling movements of the ride, and so his adventure began.

Gandalf’s mount walked patiently at the pony’s side, a spare pony laden with supplies completed their little cavalcade. Behind them, the chimneys of those who liked to get up early started to smoke; windows creaked open here and there to let in the dewy spring morning air. Bilbo dropped the keys to Bag End in his gardener’s mail box as they rode by. Hamfast Gamgee, bless his soul, was still asleep, the window frames ringing with the intensity of his snores. They’d said good-byes to each other last night over a bottle of Old Vineyard and Hamfast took it upon himself to mourn the impending departure of his friend to the bottom of the very last glass.

After a while, Bilbo tilted his head back and laughed so heartily that he had to grab the pommel to keep himself from falling off his pony.

“I feel like Black-Eyed Jack,” he explained to Gandalf and wiped the corners of his eyes. “I just realised I can’t be the first Hobbit who’s run off to marry some moneybags when there’s already a song about it!”

“Is there?” Gandalf hummed. “Well, Hobbits do have songs for every occasion...”

“Wait a minute, it’s in old Hobbitish, I’ll try to put it in Westron... yes, this should do.” Bilbo spurred his pony into a merrier gait and began to sing:

 

_White lambs shouldn’t grow black wool_

_Black-eyed Jack, don’t be such a fool_

_Wandering ‘round, roaming far and wide_

_Looking for a well-endowed bride._

 

“That’s about it,” Bilbo giggled some more, “though now I’m not so sure this song is all about the bride’s riches, when I think of it...”

Gandalf barked out a laugh so loud that a couple of sparrows startled from their perch in a nearby bush and flew away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song about Black-eyed Jack is my translation of a Valachian song “Černá vlnka na bílom beránku” (Black wool on a white lamb) which is about a boy Janko (Jack) who’s wandering around and looking for a rich bride despite his poor origins.


	3. An Unexpected Arrival

_ _

 

_When she’s in the neighbourhood_

_You know you have been blessed_

_When she lives across the woods_

_Your heart will know no rest_

_When she lives across the fields_

_Claim her for your own_

_Lest you shall be never healed_

_And live your life alone._

 

 

“What was that?” Gandalf leaned down from his saddle a little to better hear the little tune Bilbo was singing under his breath. Bilbo lifted his head a fraction and forced on a smile, eyes still glued to his pony’s mane like to a talisman.

“Just a song,” he said. “One my Mam was fond of. About how good it is to court someone who lives nearby, instead of trotting after them across half of the Middle Earth.”

“Don’t lose your courage, Bilbo,” Gandalf said gently. Then he straightened and lifted the brim of his hat to gaze ahead. “And do lift your eyes; the Lonely Mountain will not disappear back beneath the horizon just because you refuse to look at it.”

Bilbo sighed and closed his eyes, dutifully lifted his head, silently counted to three and opened them as if he was about to face a Dragon. Yup, there she was. The Lonely Mountain, that dreadful peak, looming ever bigger, dominating the horizon ever since they left the shadowy canopy of leaves over the Mirkwood path and once again revelled in sun-warmed and spell-free air of the open plains.

Bilbo wasn’t afraid, thank you very much. He was just a little apprehensive.

All right, he was downright scared.

The world was so much more than his mother’s maps.

The trek over the Misty Mountains was going to wake him with nightmares for years to come, Bilbo was certain of it.

There had been highlights on their journey that Bilbo remembered with joy. Their brief stay in the Hidden Valley had been enchanting and he had treasured every minute he got to spend with Belladonna’s trusted friends. Their visit to Thranduil’s Halls had filled Bilbo with equal awe, though tainted with a shadow of unease; the Elvenking had been benevolent and hospitable but Bilbo suspected that this attitude wasn’t founded in true geniality and fondness for guests, like that of the Master of the Last Homely House, but merely out of respect for the Wizard the Elves called Mithrandir. There was nothing homely about those caves pillared with mighty tree roots and curtained with silver waterfalls; just a cold draught of a reclusive palace, the centre of an enclosed realm.

They had spent Midyear’s Day in the Elvenking’s Halls, and for once Bilbo had actually succeeded in stirring the stone-smooth features of their noble host into an expression of mild alarm when he suggested that Gandalf should be contributing to the festivities with some of his famous fireworks.

The town of Esgaroth passed by in a blur of impressions, the most persistent of them being the smell of fish and tarred wood and the way sounds carried so strangely over the waters lapping at the house pillars. The Mistress, a kind, if a little uptight woman, offered them boats to speed up their journey to Dale; Bilbo used every inch of his Baggins politeness to decline that offer, referring the dread of water peculiar to all Hobbits. He didn’t even visit the marketplace there, though he longed to get his hands on some decent pipeweed again, simply because it wasn’t as much of a marketplace as a... marketwater.

The city of Dale was a much more agreeable sight to the Hobbit’s sensibilities. Lord Girion’s warm welcome was founded in equal parts out of reverence (towards Gandalf) and curiosity (towards Bilbo). Despite being the only Hobbit this side of the Misty Mountains, Bilbo didn’t feel as misplaced and awkwardly unique in this city as he had done ever since he left the Shire borders. There was little wonder in him being the shortest adult in the marketplace when all around him even stranger Men were milling: broad-chested men with golden-brown skin and black-winged lines around their eyes; tall and long-necked women so dark that their oiled bodies looked as if cut from polished ebony; stout men with fiery beards and blue faces (it took Bilbo two days to discover that the blue on their skin was only a paint), their milk-white skin adorned with dark blue tattoos. There were also Dwarves there, and Gandalf taught him how to distinguish between the styles into which they fashioned their beards; by the end of their week-long stay Bilbo was able to tell the Longbeards of Erebor from the Firebeards of the Iron Hills, as well as the Ironfists and Stiffbeards from the rich Red Mountains far in the East, far beyond the inland Sea of Rhûn.

On their last day of rest (before they rallied onto the Mountain, Bilbo had joked and Gandalf laughed, stating that he would make a good raider of Bilbo yet) they climbed onto the battlements and there the Wizard showed him a bastion tower with a strange device mounted on the top, its silhouette against the summer sky stark and menacing like the skeleton of a carrion bird: the windlance, Gandalf had called it.

“Even a cloud of arrows released from long bows is nothing more than a midge’s buzz for a Dragon,” Gandalf explained. “Only a Black Arrow, forged by the finest smiths deep under the Mountain and shot from a Dwarven-made windlance has any chance of piercing the scales and getting through the beast’s hide.”

“I thought the Dragons lived far in the North Waste, behind the Grey Mountains. In fact, I believe they were vanquished long ago, weren’t they?”

“King Thrór’s father was killed by a cold drake on his own doorstep not even two hundred years ago,” Gandalf said in the same tone he would use to say ‘mind to take your coat, it looks like rain out there.’ Bilbo imagined a giant scaled worm breathing ice and snow, a beast capable of laying waste equal to the Fell Winter in a mere blink of an eye, and shuddered.

“That was when Thrór abandoned their home in the Grey Mountains and came to dwell under the Lonely Mountain,” Gandalf said, gentler this time. “Making sure that should any dragon follow him, he would be prepared.”

“But there won’t be any, will there? Dragons. So far from the wasteland in which they live. Don’t they like their peace as well? Don’t they have their hoards to guard?”

Gandalf smiled down at him. “It is true that Dragons, despite their destructive nature, aren’t very fond of hassle. They hoard until they think they have enough, and then they sleep. And there haven’t been any sightings of Dragons this far south of the Wilderness for centuries.”

The hot summer sun was beating on their backs as they walked back into their quarters, yet Bilbo felt a shiver of cold run along his spine, for he saw the way Gandalf’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and he heard the words Gandalf muttered to himself as an afterthought: “Yes, they hoard until they believe their treasure is unparalleled. But they are not the only race that is too greedy...”

 

*

 

The next day they started on foot up the road leading to Erebor, a heavy laden pony trailing behind them. Bilbo’s instinctual unease grew less the closer they got to the Gates, dissipating under the rush of curiosity – perhaps his Tookish side was finally taking over, or perhaps it was simply the fact that he was so close to the Mountain that he could no longer actually see that ominous peak. Bilbo walked, feet hair brushed clean and curling proudly, chin held high and sparkling eyes taking in everything. Over his best jacket and waistcoat he wore a light grey coat, matching the colour of Gandalf’s, and when he, on a strike of fancy, pulled the cape over his head, he could soon hear whispers from people passing them, muttering about ‘Wizards and their apprentices’. Bilbo grinned.

“I’m glad to see you in such high spirits today, my dear fellow,” Gandalf chuckled. “Do your best to keep them.”

Bilbo craned his neck to look up at the massive statues of two Dwarven fighters, heavy axes in their stony grip, guarding the entrance. “Barúk Khazâd,” he said, repeating to himself some of the few words of that secret language the Dwarves deemed fit to share with others: ‘Axes of the Dwarrows.’

“That accent of yours needs a bit of work,” Gandalf murmured, the corners of his mouth twitching, and Bilbo rolled his eyes.

“I know. ‘Tact, respect, and charm.’ I shan’t be offending anyone with my Khuzdul, don’t worry.”

They left the pony at the lower gates, where goods passed into the Mountain; Gandalf issuing instructions accompanied by the universally welcome sound of clinking coin. The Main Gate was open wide, but little of the direct sunlight was falling into the Mountain as the front wall faced south and the sun wasn’t yet high in the midmorning sky.

Bilbo took a couple of steps into the shadows between the massive pillars, and for a moment he felt as if he was wading through shallow waters at the edge of a bottomless lake: whispering invitation to a pleasant respite, caressing his ankles with cool soothing fingers – but should he venture any farther, the gaping darkness would rise and envelop him, fill his lungs with freezing water and pull him into the abyss like a plaything for some unfathomable monsters.

Then his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he breathed in, the sudden rush of air making him dizzy. Erebor was magnificent.

An enormous courtyard stretched behind the Gates, flanked by symmetrical flights of stairs on either side, and on the far end, the most splendid silver fountain Bilbo has ever seen. And he’d seen the fountains of Rivendell, thank you very much. It shone with light brought in by unseen light wells and scattered on thousands of water drops, its silvery sheen, all shades between white and blue-grey, changing along with the music of rippling and purling water.

Deeper in the Mountain, Bilbo could see buildings, offices, guardrooms, workshops and homes lining the inner walls of natural rock, partly hewn into it and partly built like swallows’ nests. Archways and bridges hovered boldly over many fathoms of mines echoing with hammers and picks, the candle lights of miners like fireflies in the night. The orange glow of wrought lanterns on the crossroads was accompanied by shafts of strange light coming from different directions, white as sunlight but lacking its warmth and vibrancy.

“Mirrors,” Gandalf remarked, pointing up. “A system of polished bronze plates reflecting the sun. So, what do you think of Erebor, Bilbo?”

Bilbo took a deep breath. “It’s.... green.” He blinked and checked his own statement, unsure why his overwhelmed mind decided to get stuck on exactly that one observation. But it was true. All the time, Bilbo had feared that he would miss the colour of grass and trees inside of dead rock, beautifully carven or not. Whereas in reality, green was the prevalent colour of Erebor: dark green mass streaked with grey and black, cold green sheen of polished marble, and green glitter of olivine scattered in the grains of the rock. 

“Our arrival today is fortunate,” said Gandalf and hurried Bilbo along. “For today, King Thrór is holding an Open Court. Anyone can walk in and bring forward their pleas or disputes. This is where we shall present you.”

The Wizard’s long strides easily swallowed the distance between one broad stair and another. Bilbo hopped and tried to keep up. How did the Dwarves walk those stairways? They weren’t so much longer in the legs department than Bilbo was!

“Wouldn’t a... private audience...” Bilbo was trying to catch his breath and grabbed Gandalf’s coat to tug and slow him down a little. “... be more considerate of... don’t know, the privacy of this matter? Hm?”

Gandalf halted on the spot and leaned down to say in a low voice: “Though the soulmark you carry should be viewed as undisputable as the will of the Maker, I fear that Thrór has long ago stopped listening to any god other than his own gold. This way, your claim will be made public, and the royal family won’t be able to deny it.”

Bilbo felt colour rising to his cheeks, and there was a buzz of anger between his ears – still ringing with the exertion of climbing so much stairs in such haste. “You’ve dragged me across half of Middle Earth without even knowing for sure that anyone would so much as look at me?!”

“Well, they’re looking now,” Gandalf retorted, motioning quickly with his eyes to a group of passers-by who were staring at Bilbo and his outburst. “Do keep your voice low, my boy.  Now, listen carefully.”

Gandalf crouched in front of Bilbo, leaning heavily on his staff, and looked Bilbo gravely in the eyes. “King Thrór is rumoured to be gold-mad. It’s a sickness that plagues his line; greed and servitude to their gold. I admit that one of the reasons I came here with you was to see for myself how bad the situation is. The balance of this region could be easily tipped into the hands of...” Gandalf trailed off and shook his head, focusing back on Bilbo. “But mentioning this in the court would be most unwise. Also, do not mention that trinket you found in the goblin caves, I am still unsure of its true nature and no magical items should be treated lightly. Say nothing of the Elves – in fact, it’s better if you don’t speak at all, Bilbo Baggins.”

Bilbo nodded, but the anger at being used in one of Gandalf’s schemes still simmered in him, making his back straighten, his shoulders square, and his eyes narrow in aggravation.

Gandalf noticed it and patted his shoulder: “That’s better. Angry Hobbit is a much better sight than that wide-eyed fauntling tripping over his own feet that you’d been just a minute ago.”

“You...” Bilbo said wonderingly, trying and failing to come up with a curse worthy of a Maia.

“Did that on purpose, yes,” Gandalf chuckled and resumed his fast pace. “And here we are.”

The Throne Room was enormous, with a greenish glow of thinly carved stone curtains polished to the point of translucency coming from the openings near the ceiling. Gold veins ran through the roughly hewn rock looming just above the dais as a decoration, its natural shape contrasting with the strict geometric lines of bridges and walkways leading up to the throne.  Great statues of Dwarven kings lined both sides of the room, scowling eternally at anyone who dared to disturb their majesty, and next to them stood rows of Dwarrows, both nobles and commoners, who glared with proportionally smaller, but no less intimidating frowns on Gandalf and his little companion.

“Hail, Thrór, son of Dáin, King Under the Mountain!” Gandalf called, when he arrived before the Throne, and bowed his head – but, as Bilbo noticed, not his staff.

“Hail Tharkûn, Dwarf-friend,” a stout Dwarf at the left hand of the King replied, while the King only inclined his head in recognition, pale eyes above his steel-blue beard aglint with calculation. “What matter brings you to Erebor? What do the Wizards seek of the Dwarven kingdom?”

“I bring tidings of joy for your Kingdom, Prince Thráin,” Gandalf boomed. “For Mahal, your Maker, has once again blessed the line of Durin. I came to announce that the one bearing the soulmark of your firstborn, Thorin, has been found! Behold – I present to you Bilbo Baggins of the Shire!”

And with that, Gandalf stepped aside, the rustle of his cloak the only sound in the silence-struck room, and Bilbo bowed with a flourish and self-assurance that Gandalf had taught him, but that he certainly didn’t feel.

When he lifted his eyes again, the King was staring at him, the Prince on his left – Thráin, his son – was pressing a fist against his breast, and a third Dwarf, a tall, dark-haired, young Prince at Thrór’s right hand, looked pale as death and didn’t seem to be drawing breath.

One heartbeat, then another, of silence – and then all hell broke loose. Shouts rose from the crowds, exclamations of surprise, puzzlement, cries of blessings mixed with yells of disbelief, outright denial and even laughter. Bilbo willed his feet not to shuffle and held his chin high, even as he felt the colour draining from his face, and he kept his eyes fixed on the Throne and the Dwarves in front of them who looked as if struck with a spell, shocked into immobility, the only thing alive about them the strangely shifting light of a glowing stone above their heads.

Then the King lifted his hand. “Silence!”

The Throne room fell silent in an instant, all the Dwarves waiting with bated breaths.

“Is it true?” the king asked quietly, without moving his head towards the younger Dwarf. “Does your soulmark spell the name of this melekûn?”

Bilbo watched the Dwarf – Thorin, it must be, and what a strange feeling to finally have a face to the name after so many years – grow impossibly paler, his lips pressing into a colourless line. Thorin was gripping the armrests of his seat so hard that his knuckles were white and his wrists shook with strain, and he didn’t say a word.

“Is it true?” the King asked again, louder this time, and Bilbo felt a weight growing somewhere in his chest and pressing on his insides, his stomach was lurching and it was getting harder to breathe–

“It’s true, Sire,” came the answer from an unexpected direction – from the other side of the Throne. Prince Thráin wasn’t looking at his son and his voice was laced with a barely concealed anguish, but also determination, as if he was confessing a great guilt: “I have known the soulmark of my son from the first day he was born, and it indeed bears the name of Bilbo Baggins.”

The racket that arose in the Throne room this time was immense, but Bilbo didn’t hear a single word. The only sound he was waiting for – a word from the mouth of his soulmate – wasn’t coming, and through the sheen of tears Bilbo was struggling to keep from spilling, he could see Thorin closing his own eyes in shame.

 

*

 

“Tho-riiiin! Come out and play with me!”

Fifteen year old Dís was insufferable.

“Go and fetch Frérin. I’m busy.”

“You’re not busy, you’re stuck-up. You’re thirty and you act like an uppity fifty. And I don’t like playing with Frérin. He’s only just out of nappies and no fun.”

“And now, who’s stuck-up?”

Dís graced him with a yet-beardless copy of their mother’s patented scowl and turned to leave. Of course, Thorin shouldn’t have let himself be lulled into a false sense of victory. He should have known his sister better than that.

As soon as he settled back in his seat and glanced once more down at the book he’d been reading, Dís was on him like a flash and ripped the book out of his surprised hands with a gleeful “Ah-HA!”

“Give that back!”

“I knew it!” she triumphed. “Mooning about that Bilbo Baggins of yours, again!”

“Careful!” Thorin snapped, when she brandished the book on history of Dwarven soulmarks over her head like a war trophy. “It’s the only copy. The librarian would have my hide if–”

“So much for your ‘not caring about that blasted mark in the slightest’, brother dear,” Dís remarked without mercy.

“I do not!” Thorin insisted. His sister only raised her beautifully arched eyebrows.

It was true – in a way. He vowed not to care. He refused to care. For his adolescent sister, and his baby brother, Thorin’s soulmark was just another means to poke fun at him. But Thorin remembered well the late night talks between Thráin and his wife, talks that their young son wasn’t supposed to overhear.

_‘It’s no Dwarven name,’ Thráin had sighed, ‘and not an Elven one either.’_

_‘And what of it, my love? So it’s a Man, and there’s still the grace of Valar among Men. That Baggins person may be strong and honourable.’_

_‘Yes to all that, dear one, but my concern is that their lives are short – much shorter than the lives Mahal bestowed upon us. What blessing is there in a love that is doomed to die a premature death?’_

As he was growing up, Thorin came to share his father’s mistrust towards his soulmark. A name like that had never been heard even in Dale, a lively crossroads of trade, swarming with all sorts of people from both near and far. Moreover, Thorin was in line to the throne. He had responsibilities to his Kingdom, his heart wasn’t all his to give, his to gamble with.

He concentrated on his studies and soon he noticed that Grandfather was looking at him with pride on those rare occasions he looked at his family at all. More often than not, Thorin was seated at his right hand during Court, in the place that should rightfully belong to his father. Thorin didn’t know what ancient feud still festered between Thrór and Thráin, but when he realised that the King’s disfavour didn’t extend to him – when he discovered that the King saw potential in him – he resolved to make good on that potential, to the best of his ability.

The right to rule Erebor would be his one day. Relinquishing the vague promise of his nebulous soulmark hadn’t seemed as a grave sacrifice when compared to such a grand goal.

“I bet she’s an Elf,” Dís interrupted the flow of Thorin’s thoughts with her favourite joke.

“Half-elf. From the deserts south-east from the Sea of Rhûn. And her other parent from the Haradhrim. She’s tall like an elm and brown and covered in black paint from head to toe.”

“Honestly–” Thorin groaned.

“Or she’s a grey-eyed Giantess of a Woman of the Dúnedain. Six feet tall, some of them are.”

Dís was obsessed with the idea that Thorin’s soulmate was of a towering height. So Thorin was rather short for his age, and what of it? His growth-spurt had yet to come.

“Or she’s a manikin from the deep deserts, with skin like wrinkled brown parchment!” Dís laughed. “That would be nice, not having to crane your neck to look her in the eyes!”

“Or she’s the most beautiful Dwarrowdam to ever live and no one will ever look at you twice with her around,” Thorin groused, realising too late that he shouldn’t engage in the fights his sister picked.

“Or she’s a Troll, to match your wonderful personality.” Dís hurled the book back at him, Thorin only just managing to catch it, and as she twirled through the door, he could still hear her laugh: “I bet she’s over six feet tall, mark my words!”

 

*

 

Thirty years later, Thorin was staring at a Halfling – a Halfling! – no more than three feet tall, and he couldn’t grasp how his Maker could have hated him so much.

This – this was the being he was supposed to love with all his might, more than himself, more than his kingdom?

Not a Man, not an Elf, not even a Troll – a Melekûn, a Halfling. Thorin remembered being taught about those Melekhân. Apparently they were farmers, burrow-diggers, game hunters at best. This one – Bilbo Baggins – was short, narrow-shouldered and plump at the waist, cheeks completely hairless like a newborn’s bottom, all the hair that should have been on his face having migrated for some unfathomable reason to the tops of his ridiculously large – and bare – feet. His toes were curling and flexing as if he was seeking the reassurance of dirt instead of hard stone beneath his feet. He didn’t look like a fearless warrior, or a wise mage, or a venerable scholar, or at least a seasoned adventurer – in short, like anyone worthy of becoming the Consort of Erebor. He looked like a green grocer. Worse still, he looked like the grocer’s apprentice, childish, intimidated and about to cry.

Someone was speaking. It took nearly a minute for the words to break through the mush of scattered, blundering thoughts in Thorin’s head and register that it was his Grandfather, asking a question.

How was he supposed to answer? How was he supposed to acknowledge such a failure of fate – he, a descendant of Durin the Deathless himself, soul bound to such a misshapen creature living in an earth hole, neither a Man nor a mouse!

Maybe if he denied it... If he pleaded that a mistake has been made, a misunderstanding, ridiculous in its enormity–

The words of his father fell on him heavily and mercilessly like a marble stone sealing a tomb. His own father, probably heeding a matter of honour or some other superfluous tradition, singlehandedly undermining everything that Thorin strove for. For how ever could Thrór look at him with grace again when he was burdened with such inconvenient a partner?

Thorin had to close his eyes under the assault of so many conflicting emotions. He desperately wished this all was a mistake, or the bold attempt of some fraudulent impostor, and yet at the same time he knew that the very nature of soulmarks prevented such an occurrence. No-one other than Bilbo Baggins himself would know that he should be seeking a claim on Thorin; and no-one but Thorin’s family knew the name written on his skin. Only his father now, as his mother passed into the Halls of Waiting years ago, and of course his siblings…

Thorin’s eyes snapped open. Could it be one of Dís and Frérin’s pranks? A cruel and tasteless one, but ultimately only a jest? To hire a weasel child from Dale to play the role of Thorin’s other half? Mahal knew he suffered enough of their mocking for that cause over the years. No, he wouldn’t put it past them, especially not past Frérin.

Thorin rose from his seat, not even noticing that the Throne Room had been emptied at the word of his Father, the excited arguments carried away with the crowd. He had to see for himself, right this instant. He would know a smear of paint or a tattoo from a true Mark. Determined to disclose this awful prank at once, he strode down the dais and right up to the Halfling, extending a commanding hand:

“Show it to me!”

The Halfling was probably too shocked to even flinch – or too good an actor, prepared for this eventuality – because he only blinked at him, drawing his chin back and narrowing his eyes.

“Have you not heard me? Show it.”

“This is the first you have to say to me?” Bilbo Baggins asked in a surprisingly steady voice for a creature that had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. Thorin saw the Wizard’s hand land reassuringly at the Halfling’s shoulder but Bilbo shook it off, lifting his hand and fumbling with the little button on his left cuff. What Thorin did not expect, though, was that the small fellow still kept talking.

“I do understand your caution, believe me I was flabbergasted too when I discovered who you were. But I have not crossed Mountains, outwitted Trolls, riddled with monsters in the dark and braved the gloom of Mirkwood just to be barked at as if I were your service dog. I must say you haven’t very nice manners for a Prince.”

Thorin felt his hackles rise. “What do you know about royal manners when you dare talk to me like–”

The rest of his rebuke was interrupted by a wrist showed unceremoniously right in front of his eyes.

It wasn’t a tattoo. The Mark was genuine. Thorin saw that much instantly, he didn’t need to run his fingers over the letters on that soft wrist, so small and fragile compared to his own. But yet, compelled by a sudden urge, he did just that. The skin under the Mark was softer and thinner than any skin he ever touched, the veins fluttering with a pulse so close underneath. Prince Thorin wasn’t getting much skin-on-skin contact in his daily life, he was used to half-hugs around layers of wool, leather, and armour; and even the elegant hands of his sister were covered in skin thick as a wild boar, cool to the touch and hard to cut. But this, holding this hand was like holding a bird, with light bones and fast beating heart, feeling the flow of life within through only a thin barrier.

Thorin blinked and averted his eyes, not daring to meet the triumphant accusation in the eyes of the Halfling, shining with indeterminable colour – in the dim light of the hall they looked dark green. He made to let go of his wrist, swallowing down his disappointment over his suspicion being proven wrong, when he noticed the second line of lettering. How could he have missed it in the first place? He tightened his grip until he felt the bones under his fingers shift, the skin under his fingertips turning white. It must have hurt, but he didn’t care. The Halfling clenched his jaw but made no attempt to snatch his hand back, standing proud like a ram, head thrown back in challenge. Thorin would laugh at his stubbornness if he wasn’t so angry.

“This says, ‘Thorin Oakenshield’,” he growled.

“And this,” Bilbo Baggins pointed with his free hand to Thorin’s own wrist, where a sliver of skin peeked out of a scrunched sleeve, “says ‘Bilbo Baggins’, in Westron letters and my own handwriting. Even if there was some other Thorin–”

“How do you know there is not?” Thorin demanded.

The Wizard above them cleared his throat. “It’s a name passed down in the line of Durin, my Prince. No other Dwarven clan would dare use it. All of your cousins are childless still. You are the only one bearing that name.”

Thorin finally let go of the Halfling and turned to his father. “But what does it mean?”

“It seems that this is meant to be your battle-name, my son,” Thráin replied carefully. “You are still to see your first battle. Perhaps you were meant to meet your soulmate at a later time.” 

Thorin frowned. Oakenshield? What a ridiculous moniker. Only the poorest warriors carried wooden shields. Or it could be a taunt, suggesting that he would hide from battle behind a locked door. Was this wretched creature just adding insult to the injury?

“What is done is done,” the King suddenly said, his face outwardly pensive – oh, but Thorin knew that look. Thrór usually looked his solemnest when he was pursuing a twisted plan.

“You are here now, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, and we acknowledge your claim. But surely you understand that I must have the happiness of my grandson and the future of my Kingdom at the forefront of my mind.”

Thorin breathed out in relief.

“I understand, Sire,” the Halfling said. “Even in our Shire, the Mark is never the sole insurance of a couple’s happiness. Let me thus ask you, as the custom dictates, for your permission to court your grandson.”

Thorin’s relief froze half-way up his throat. Being courted by this Halfling – this hapless creature from a land of dirt-diggers? He would be the laughingstock of the entire Kingdom! He watched, stunned into immobility by the Halfling’s brazenness, as the Wizard made a sign and two Dwarves appeared at the entrance of the room, carrying a chest – a heavy one, judging by the sagging of their backs.

“I will abide by the customs of your people,” the unbelievable creature continued his crazy rambling, “and I will endeavour to prove myself worthy of winning the heart of your heir. Please, grant me your permission and accept this chest of gold as a token of goodwill.”

The chest lid popped open, revealing the shine of golden pieces. Rings, coins and ingots glowed in the greenish light and Thorin almost heard its call to his Grandfather – the silent song of a tiny chest, of a little bit of gold, whispering in a voice that Thrór was all too fond of hearing. Thorin watched in horror as his Grandfather’s eyes alighted with the spark they held when he was overseeing the Treasury. He knew his Grandfather’s obsession. It didn’t matter how big or little the chest was; that it was a mere drop in the sea of wealth that was Erebor – it was gold, offered to the King, and no matter how much gold the King already had, he must always add to it any gold his eyes fell upon. He couldn’t deny himself grasping at any piece of gold that stood the chance of being his.

And somehow, the Halfling knew that too. Oh, he wasn’t childish and clueless. He was cunning and devious. Thorin noticed the way the Wizard observed the proceedings with a sharp look, and he realised that they’ve all been played.

Thrór, King Under the Mountain, was about to sell his heir’s honour for nothing more than his body weight of gold.

“You have my permission as the head of the Durin family,” Thrór inclined his head with a benign smile. “You may go now. My son will see to it that you are given rooms to stay. I expect you to present your first courting gift to my grandson tomorrow.”

Thorin didn’t want to hear anything more. He bowed to his grandfather and left the room. No one made a move to stop him.

 

*

 

“That didn’t go very well, did it,” Bilbo remarked under his breath as they trotted a few paces behind the grey-haired Prince Thráin, following him without pause across countless bridges, walkways and corridor turns, a pair of heavily armed Dwarven guards at the rear of their small procession.

“It could have gone better,” Gandalf agreed. “On the other hand, it could also have gone much worse. For one, your head is still sitting firmly on your shoulders.”

Bilbo snorted a little laugh at the exaggerated glumness on the Wizard’s face, betrayed only by the twitch of his whiskers.

“I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this,” he admitted.

“I believe it would be wise to let go of any expectations and take things as you find them,” Gandalf advised. As usual with such pieces of wizardry wisdom, Bilbo thought to himself, it was easier said than done.

They arrived at a cluster of palatial houses, half-suspended over the deep fall of Erebor’s grand cave, with terraces overlooking the beautifully lit main staircases, and Thráin stopped in front of one house, separated a bit from the others by a guarded gate.

“These are the guest rooms of the royal wing,” Thráin said to them. “You will be comfortable here.” He paused and his expressionless gaze slid over to Bilbo. “And safe,” he added.

Bilbo didn’t need it to be explained why Thráin needed to think of his safety. He had heard enough in the Throne Room after Gandalf’s first announcement: not everyone’s surprise was pleasant. He could imagine that his sudden appearance could be perceived as the proverbial grit in the gears of the well-oiled plans of some noble clans who had their minds set on marrying into the royal family.

“Thank you, my Lord,” Bilbo bowed. Then he straightened and earnestly looked the Prince in the eye. “And thank you for speaking up for me, earlier.”

“It was the duty of honour,” Thráin said dismissively. “My son’s soulmate deserves to be acknowledged, however unfit he may seem to be. Tell me, child of the West: what do you know about Dwarven courtship?”

Bilbo exchanged a brief look with Gandalf and obtained a slight nod, which only strengthened the decision he had already come to: that he liked this Dwarf. Prince Thráin seemed to be just and honourable, and he didn’t mince his words. Neither did Bilbo.

“I’ve been taught enough to know, my Lord, that I am expected to fail in this courtship. One night is a tight time limit to come up with a gift worthy of a King’s grandson.”

For the first time, the stern face of the Dwarven Prince mellowed in something akin to smile.

“That’s true,” he agreed. “The King expects you to fail as a suitor; that way my son would be free, and the King would get to keep the dowry you already brought forth.” He looked Bilbo in the eyes, his pale grey gaze so sharp that it felt like it was searching through the deepest recesses of Bilbo’s soul, but the Hobbit didn’t feel threatened. Oddly enough, it felt reassuring – almost familiar. It was a gaze Bilbo hadn’t felt upon himself for many years now.

“If you were aware of the trap, why did you step in?” Thráin asked at last.

Bilbo smiled in return: “I’ve come prepared.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song at the beginning of this chapter is my rather loose translation of a Bohemian folk song "Kdo má milou doma". Czech readers may best know it from the TV fairytale "Pyšná princezna".


	4. Something of Steel

 

The next morning found Bilbo digging his toes into the tiled floor to keep from overbalancing as he leaned as far back as he could – and still he couldn’t see where the bookshelves ended and the ceiling began.

Faced with the magnificence of the Erebor library, Bilbo forgot how to breathe.

He ran his fingers across a row of polished book spines, the gold-etched Cirth on them naturally unintelligible to him. He could recognise some of the runes, familiar as he was at least with those that constituted his Soulmark, but the rest of them spiked and slashed uncompromisingly from the pages, a thick fence barring him from entering the garden of knowledge. It was frustrating.

“The Westron section is two shelves to the right,” a kind, slightly wheezing voice broke Bilbo’s concentration. He turned around, dusting his hands on his trousers like a schoolboy caught at some mischief, and found himself looking into a pair of misted-over eyes set deep in a face so full of wrinkles that it looked like a walnut shell, framed with thin braids of snow-white hair.

“We also have an assortment of books written in Sindarin, if you prefer reading in tengwar,” the old librarian said and then lowered his eyelids – his spine was in a permanent bow already, and it creaked as he moved. “Farin, son of Borin, at your service.”

“Bilbo Baggins, at yours,” Bilbo finally found his words and bowed, remembering his manners too. “You don’t mind me here?”

“Not at all,” the librarian assured him, shuffling his feet on the floor and leaning his weight on the shelves as he progressed slowly alongside Bilbo, who wondered if this Farin was just too proud to use a cane.

“You have a strange name,” the Dwarf said and chuckled to himself as if he had made a brilliant joke.

“Well, I am a stranger,” Bilbo replied good-naturedly. “Dwarves don’t use family names?”

“You could say we do, sort of,” Farin’s eyes nearly disappeared between the wrinkles as he thought deeply. “My father was the second son of King Náin, son of Óin, son of Glóin, descendant of Durin’s line.... do you see the pattern?” Bilbo nodded, eagerly absorbing every tidbit of information.

“We also pass the names between generations,” the librarian lectured him. “My second son’s boys were named Óin and Glóin as well. Names of the kings, and fine lads they are! Well, Bilbo Baggins, there you are.” The old Dwarf patted the stack of books on the lowest shelf with the same gesture as one would pat the head of a favourite grandchild. “Be careful with the spines, some of them are a bit stiff from disuse. Not much demand for Westron books around here...”

Librarian Farin shuffled off and Bilbo peered at some titles from the display. The End of War of Wrath didn’t sound very enticing, The Effects of Weathering on Olivine even less. The Loss of the Nauglamír, on the other hand, looked promising, but only until Bilbo opened it and instead of ornamental rows of verses or a flowing stream of prose he found plain sections of texts, each prefaced by a word or phrase in Khuzdul, so that the entire thing looked rather like a…

“That’s a glossary you have there,” a stranger’s voice interrupted Bilbo once again. “I’m afraid the original is in Khuzdul only.”

Bilbo sighed in disappointment, put the book back and straightened his back to look at the new Dwarf properly. It must have been an apprentice this time; for he seemed very young, with his beard yet sparse and thick hair too short for any of those elaborate braid patterns Bilbo had seen around. Wide grey eyes stared at him with unabashed curiosity.

“You have Westron glossaries for Khuzdul books, but not whole translations? Why?”

“Oh!” The Dwarf’s whole body jerked as if he was surprised that Bilbo was actually talking to him. “That’s – that’s because Khuzdul is – ancient. Unchangeable. Sacred, you see? So it’s not very good for... every day life, I guess. From the cradle, we grow up with Westron, and we are taught Khuzdul in school. From masters. So when there’s a book with lot of ancient words, sometimes even a good scholar needs to be... reminded of the words that aren’t in use very often. Hence, the glossary.”

“You’re not getting into any trouble telling me this, are you?” Bilbo felt he had to make sure, knowing what he did about Dwarven over-protectiveness of their secrets.

“Oh, no, no, no,” his new acquaintance laughed, wrenching his hands in a nervous manner. “These are well-known facts, Mister...”

Where are my manners today, Bilbo cursed inwardly. Then he remembered the fresh lesson from the old librarian. Time to try blending in, he told to himself and bowed to the young Dwarf with a proud declamation of:

“Bilbo, son of Bungo, at your service.”

When he looked back up, the open expression from the apprentice’s face was gone. He bowed curtly, head drawn between his shoulders and eyes averted, and muttered: “Ori, at yours.”

Bilbo gawked for a moment, thrown by the sudden change, and when he realised Ori was about to withdraw and disappear back between the shelves, he blurted out:

“Forgive me. It’s my first day here and just my luck that I have already offended you, though I have no idea how. What did I say wrong?”

There was a whisper of sound from the other side of the shelves, in the opposite direction to where Farin disappeared earlier. It occurred to Bilbo that despite the morning hour, there were bound to be other readers in the Library. Oh great. Going around and making an uncultured clot of himself, what a brilliant first impression.

Ori stopped, cast a confused look around, and for a moment looked as sorry as Bilbo felt. “Oh, nothing,” he stuttered. “The fault lies with me, I forgot you couldn’t have known...” He wrung his hands again and his voice took on a surer tone. “You see, Mister Bilbo, when you gave me your father’s name, you had me at a disadvantage, because I don’t have one to give in return, and that’s considered quite unmannerly.”

Bilbo blinked. Ori didn’t know his father’s name? With the amount of pride Dwarves laid in their lines of parentage, it seemed impossible... Bilbo saw a hint of wariness in Ori’s eyes, a precarious edge between lashing out and fleeing, and he remembered where he’d seen it before. So-called ‘cuckoo’s children’ happened too, in the Shire, of course. Little Daisy Grubb was a particularly vicious hair-puller whenever someone tried to bully her because Papa Grubb wasn’t her real father.

“I am sorry,” he said earnestly. “It wasn’t my intention to make you appear unmannerly.”

Apparently it worked to appease Ori’s nerves, because he offered a shy smile and took a step closer. “I know. It wasn’t your fault. My brothers always tell me I am too sensitive... You’re our Prince’s suitor, aren’t you?”

“Word travels fast, I see,” Bilbo remarked drily. With the amount of drama Gandalf caused by his public revelation yesterday, he hardly could have expected anything else.

“The Prince must be thrilled,” Ori breathed.

“You have no idea,” Bilbo told him and prayed that his face was perfectly serene as he said that. The shift of a shadow behind two rows of shelves, betraying someone’s presence within the earshot, reminded him that they weren’t alone. It wouldn’t do to badmouth the Prince in front of his subjects. Even so, he couldn’t help having himself a bit of a pout:

“I was hoping to have a word in private with his Highness this morning, but it seems that actual conversation between two people is not necessary in a courtship.”

Someone was definitely listening, for Bilbo’s sarcasm had earned him a stifled cough from behind the shelves. But, whatever hint of hurt had seeped into Bilbo’s tone, Ori didn’t seem to catch on. The young Dwarf’s eyes were glued to Bilbo’s left hand, and his hands twitched unconsciously as if he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to touch.

“Sorry, you want to have a look?”

Ori’s face snapped up to him so fast that Bilbo feared he’d pulled a muscle in his neck, and from the shadows nearby he heard a distinct sharp intake of breath. A realisation dawned on him and he pressed his lips together, torn between umbrage at being spied on and amusement over such childish behaviour from his intended.

“That’s – that’s not –” Ori was stammering, “–you wouldn’t mind showing me?” From such an over-reaction, Bilbo could tell that Dwarven soulmarks were indeed a really closely guarded secret. As if they didn’t already have enough of them.

“I wouldn’t,” Bilbo shrugged, almost feeling the waves of silent agony emanating from Thorin’s hiding place. “But I’m afraid Prince Thorin would mind. It’s between the two of us, you see.”

A small gasp came from the shadows, as if someone had been holding their breath for much too long. Ori looked visibly relieved. “That’s very Dwarven of you,” he said. “Forgive my curiosity. You see, my mother...”

“Your mother has a soulmark?” Bilbo realised.

“She had, or so I’ve been told,” Ori nodded. “She died giving birth, having me, so I never had the chance to see it. It’s a rather long story...”

“I love stories,” Bilbo assured him. “If you don’t mind?”

It seemed that Ori didn’t mind, judging by the eagerness with which he dragged his newfound friend over to a couple of seats in a quiet nook of the Library. The shadow followed them with stealth that was threatening to make Bilbo laugh. Honestly, the Dwarf breathed so loud... Thankfully Ori hadn't noticed a thing. 

“My mother was born with a soulmark, and she spent a long time searching for the Dwarf that was meant for her,” Ori began with the air of a skilled storyteller. Bilbo could see why the lad had chosen the career of a librarian. “But however hard she tried, her other half wasn’t forthcoming. Her childbearing years were shortening and so, after a long and fruitless search, she married a Dwarf that she was very fond of, and who loved her dearly, and she had my eldest brother, Dori. But then Dori’s father died in a hunting accident, and left her with very little. Dori was still very small and so my mother, in her distress, accepted an offer of marriage from her husband’s distant cousin, and soon my brother Nori was born.”

Ori paused for breath and Bilbo shifted on the seat with anticipation. He thought he could see where the story was going.

“Nori’s father was a very withdrawn and reserved Dwarf, and they say he loved my mother the same way he loved his collection of clockworks – just another thing to have. But my mother didn’t desire love anymore, her children were enough to make her happy, or so she thought. But then one day, when she was almost three hundred years old, she was approached by a young Dwarf, only just of age, who showed her her name on his wrist.”

“Oh my.”

“It was a love at first sight,” Ori smiled almost proudly. “I’ve been told that my mother was very beautiful. Of course, Nori’s father wouldn’t hear of letting her go. It was quite unprecedented. But what can one do against the call of their soul?”

Throw a stroppy tantrum and stalking people around a Mountain – the ready reply hovered on the tip of Bilbo’s tongue but he refrained from saying it aloud.

“When Nori’s father found out my mother was carrying me, he challenged my father to a duel. He was an experienced warrior, and my father barely of age. That’s why I don’t even know his name, he died before I was born – my brother Dori raised me – and Nori’s father forbade everyone from mentioning him, ever. But then he was accused of kinslaying, for kiling one’s soulmate is killing a part of them, and he was exiled. Nori doesn’t honour his name because of it, and Dori doesn’t give his father’s name either, out of loyalty to us, so if you happen to meet either of them...”

“I won’t be giving them mine,” Bilbo concluded, slightly overwhelmed. That was the most tragic romantic history he ever heard. “Thank you for the warning, and for your story. It must have been hard for you.”

“It makes one a good fighter, even if they don’t look the part,” Ori shrugged, patting a pocket on his coat where Bilbo could make out the shape of a slingshot.

“This whole soulmark business is rather terrifying, when you think of it,” Bilbo sighed.

“It is,” Ori agreed. “Sometimes I wonder why they exist at all. Certainly in my case it did more bad than good.”

“Don’t say that,” Bilbo said with conviction. “You’re a child of the soulmark. Whatever the Mark had or hadn’t caused, only one thing is certain: it led your parents together so you could be born. In the Shire, we believe that such people are meant for great deeds.”

Ori blinked rapidly and blushed. “What great deeds can await a little fatherless scribe...?”

“That shall be seen,” Bilbo said and, to himself, he thought: Great, now I sound exactly like Gandalf. Let’s hope it’s not contagious.  

 

*

 

Ori scampered off about his business, Bilbo Baggins left the Library muttering about something he called elevenses, and Thorin turned to leave his hiding place only to almost bodily collide with the united front of the Durin siblings.

“Was that him?” Frérin asked, watching with childish curiosity as the Halfling’s russet head disappeared into the crowd.

“As if there could be any mistake,” Thorin huffed.

“The new wonder of Erebor,” Dís remarked, and for a moment Thorin couldn’t decide if the mockery in her tone was aimed at the Halfling or at himself.

So the rumours had already begun to circulate. “And what’s so wondrous about him?”

Dís fixed him with a look, polished to such sternness that sometimes Thorin forgot that she wasn’t quite yet of age.

“He’s your soulmate. Having a soulmate is a wondrous thing in itself.”

“You sound just like that beardless fool did a moment ago,” Thorin gestured behind his shoulder in the general direction of the Library. “And the Halfling was twice the fool for encouraging him. One Dwarf dead, another one dishonoured, a family in ruins, for nothing more than a bit of scribbling on the skin.”

“I’ve heard that story well,” Dís shook her head, “but I don’t think you have. The Mark allowed the Dwarf to find her – it didn’t make her love him.”

“What exactly–” Thorin began, but Frérin interrupted him in that careless manner of youth, unburdened yet with respect and responsibilities:

“I think the occasion calls for a feast. Tonight, in our guest’s honour. To get you two talking, and not just sulking in your respective corners.”

“However brilliant your idea is, I fear you’re too late,” Thorin said vindictively. “Tonight, there will be no feast in the Halfling’s honour, because this noon, his gift will be rejected and he will be on his way back to his precious Shire.”

“How are you so certain that he will fail?”

Thorin put his arm around his brother’s shoulders in a show of a good mood. “The first gift should be forged ironwork, and if he’s a blacksmith, then I am a gardener.”

“It doesn’t need to be made by his own hands,” Dís pointed out. “The market in Dale–”

“Believe me, sister, that there is nothing the Halfling can bring that would interest me.”

 

 *

 

“Elven blade?”

Thorin grasped the bone handle of the sword in his fist. It felt almost weightless, a natural extension of his arm. The bone was warm to touch, the surface just the right bit on the rough side to prevent the weapon slipping out of its wielder’s grasp. He could feel the sharpness of the blade edge without even putting the pad of his finger to it. The daring curve of the blade gleamed with a silver flame and when he swung it experimentally around him, slashing through thin air, it whispered to him of dangerous elegance, deathly precision, a perfect union of swordsman and sword.

Thorin couldn’t spare more than half an ear to the scoff in his grandfather’s voice. He tried to rein in his want, but the truth was, Elven blade or not, it was the finest sword he had ever seen.

Not that he would actually give the Halfling the satisfaction of showing his approval on his face. However he much he disliked the giver, though, Thorin could not help but like the gift. 

Pity it would never be his.

“What made you think that the work of Elves could ever be better than a sword made with Dwarven craft?” the King asked, his tone implying that the Halfling had gone a step too far.

“Its name is Orcrist, the Goblin Cleaver,” Gandalf supplied. “Made by the high Elves of Gondolin, in the First Age. Save for Narsil, which lies in shards, you won’t find a finer blade in the whole Middle Earth, O King.”

“It glows blue, when the Orcs are near,” Bilbo Baggins added. He looked insufferably proud of himself.

Prince Thráin was looking at him with a new regard in his face. “How is this yours to give?” he asked gravely.

“It was part of the treasure we seized from a group of Trolls that we encountered in Eriador,” Bilbo said, so matter-of-factly, as if taking from Trolls was an everyday occurrence, hardly remarkable.

“How did you defeat a group of Trolls?” Frérin was supposed to be silent during the audience but he couldn’t help himself. Thorin was grateful for it – it spared him the indignity of having to ask for himself and thus admitting that it interested him.

“I... mostly talked to them,” the Halfling said. “Distracted them until dawn broke and they turned to stone.”

Three generations of Durins stared at him, speechless. Gandalf cleared his throat.

“Master Elrond of Rivendell is the closest kin to the once rightful owners, and he has approved of Bilbo’s intention to bestow this sword upon Thorin as his first courting gift.”

“That meddling Half-Elf should have no say in what concerns my family!” Thrór spat. Thorin looked at him and a vague sense of alarm began to stir in his gut. It looked as if the King was intrigued by the gift…

“If I may add, O King,” the Halfling quipped, his wide eyes so innocent and his smile so obliging that Thorin immediately sensed things taking a turn for the worse, “that King Thranduil of the Woodland realm took a particular liking to the sword and he was very disappointed when he learned that I intended to present it to Thorin, and not to his Majesty himself.”

A gleeful smirk appeared on Thrór’s face. Thorin couldn’t believe it. Did his grandfather not see how he was being played? Was he really willing to prolong the humiliation of his heir to get one up in his age-long feud with the Elvenking?

“I approve of your first gift,” Thrór said with a malicious smile and Thorin let go of the sword so abruptly that it fell on the table with a clatter.

“It is an appropriate gift for a Prince,” the King continued, “considering you probably couldn’t be asked to forge a weapon with your own hands, to honour the tradition.”

“Your Majesty is very understanding,” Bilbo bowed. “It is true that we Hobbits are no smiths. The scabbard, though–”

It was the first time Thorin even noticed the scabbard. The leather was cut to fit the sword and sewn together with laborious tiny stitches whose neatness left much to be desired. The length of it was covered in strange filigree, the pattern consisting of thin steel wire woven together in the shape of... snowflakes? No, flowers. The Halfling must have crafted it, Thorin realised, probably during the rests on their way to Erebor.

“Yes, yes,” Thrór waved a dismissive hand. “You shouldn’t have spent your coin on such a waster, but it’s understandable that you are ill-equipped to recognise ore from slag. Such a blade deserves to be sheathed in woven gold, inlaid with gems – sapphires, I think, to enhance the glow, and perhaps blood garnets... Rest assured, Halfling, that the treasury of Erebor and the craftsmanship of our people will make up for the shortcomings of your gift.”

Thorin saw the Halfling swallow and press his lips into a thin line as the King threw the scabbard away. Something uncomfortable pulled at the inside of his chest at the sight, and for a moment he felt as if he were twenty again, sitting late into the night in the workshop, working his fingers to the bone, and yet, knowing deep inside, that in the morning his grandfather would only scoff at anything Thorin had created.

No. This was no place for pity. The Halfling wasn’t a Dwarf, he surely didn’t place much pride in his craft, and if he did, he should have tried harder. The leatherwork really was poor, even the clumsiest apprentice in Erebor would make a better one. And, honestly, flowers? What was the Halfling thinking?

Thorin jolted when a hard boot kicked him under a table. He lifted his eyes to find his sister glaring at him, and Frérin – oh, Thorin had no idea that his baby brother, who spent his life either teasing or hero-worshipping Thorin, even had it in him to look disapproving. 

Thrór left, still cackling to himself, and the meeting was dismissed. Thorin decided that the most logical thing to do would be to take the sword to armoury to have it re-sheathed, and if it spared him the duty of accompanying his suitor to his quarters, all the better.

“Don’t forget the feast tonight,” Frérin called at him as he was leaving, loud enough for everyone to hear. Thorin gritted his teeth. That’s what he got for calling any idea of his brother’s brilliant. As he slipped through the door, he saw Frérin picking up the forgotten scabbard and he caught a snatch of his sister talking–

“... I used to have the same callus from working wire. I’ve never seen a piece of filigree quite like that, how is it made?”

Thorin let the door fall shut and remained standing close behind it, listening in.

“Well, it’s called crochet,” the Halfling’s voice replied, with a note of pleased eagerness that someone was appreciating his efforts. “Except that usually it’s done with yarn instead of a wire. I had to use the finest tying wire I could find, a poacher’s wire they called it... My mother taught me. She used to make the finest doilies in the Shire.”

“Doilies?” How was Dís doing it, sounding so genuinely interested and the amusement in her voice so gentle and well-meaning, instead of a ridiculing taunt? Why did she indulge the Halfling in his prattling?

“It’s... a decorative cloth. The finer the yarn, the finer the patterns can be. With a proper yarn, I could make you a doily for your tabletop as fine as the frost flowers on a window in winter... I’ve got my mother’s pattern book with me. I was afraid to leave it at home because my numerous aunts would have made away with it as soon as I was out the door.”

“So it’s a craft,” Dís came to the realisation, “and a kind of family heirloom too, coveted by the others. Well done, Master Baggins – craft is a craft, no matter what the material. I’m beginning to believe that you Hobbits aren’t as different from us Dwarrows as we first thought.”

His foolish sister couldn’t be farther from the truth, Thorin thought to himself and made for the armoury, his beautiful sword in hand as if it always had belonged there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the movie canon, Dori, Nori and Ori are said to be half-brothers, sharing one mother but three different fathers. My imagination ran away with it.


	5. Something of Gold

 

Bilbo woke up with the mother of all headaches. Some nifty little Dwarf had set up a smithy in his skull and was now banging all his hammers on Bilbo’s eye sockets from inside.

He blinked blearily. Even the insides of his eyelids felt like sandpaper. Why had nobody told him that he didn’t have to match Dís mug to mug?

The King had retired early in the evening, and Prince Thráin got into deep discussion with Gandalf, apparently content to leave his children to their own devices. Which left Bilbo alone with Frérin, Dís, a barrel of ale, and let’s not forget, Thorin, amidst them all and yet somehow managing to appear utterly isolated.

Then Dís went to refill her mug, and Bilbo was of course compelled to do the same. In a Hobbit party, it would be fatally impolite to drink less that the hostess did. Bilbo’s aunt Mirabella was dreaded by the entirety of Hobbiton precisely for that reason. By the time Bilbo realised that perhaps a cultural misunderstanding was well underway, Frérin was already under the table and Dís’ eyes gleamed with a competitive flame. It was impossible to back off after that.

At least, Bilbo consoled himself, he didn’t lose to both Durin siblings. But the consolation was weak, for Frérin was merely a child by Dwarven standards. The lad had turned thirty-three last month. Bilbo marvelled at the differences. In the Shire, Frérin would be already courting someone and preparing to settle down.

Ugh. Courting. Bilbo rubbed his temples. The little blacksmith inside his skull moved on to heating his forge. Bilbo’s throat felt so dry and bitter that he was certain that if he exhaled too fast, a gush of fire would come out of his mouth.

Which would be perhaps preferable than some of the things he vaguely remembered saying the night prior.

 

_“You.” Bilbo tried to stand upright, but gravity for some reason worked more on his right side tonight. Or perhaps he was all right, and it was the Mountain that was tilting. Hard to say. Bilbo was sure he’d had too much ale by now. There was no other explanation for why that scowl on Thorin’s face would look adorable. Or perhaps it always looked adorable? Another thing Bilbo wasn’t sure of. He clutched his half-empty mug closer to his breast and hoped that he hadn’t said any of that aloud. Why ever was he here with the Dwarves? Oh yes, he was courting one. That one. That beautiful, but alas, ever so sullen one. Ever so silent one._

_The room was too warm, Bilbo decided. That was why he had to drink so much. He felt as if something was expanding inside his chest; a prickle of thousands of tiny needles was running down his arms; his wrists tingled. The rush warmed his heart; Bilbo felt very generous, determined to draw that sulking one into their merriments._

_“Why won’t you ever talk to me?”_

_Thorin looked to the door with an undisclosed longing in his face. Perhaps he’d been half-choked by the same noose of politeness that made Bilbo fall into the drinking trap; politeness that prevented him from leaving before the feast had come to an end._

_“I would have you leave me alone, Halfling.”_

_“My name,” Bilbo pointed a finger at him – or at least at one of the two Thorins he was fairly certain was the real one, “is Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins. I know it can be hard to remember but in case you’ve forgotten there is that nice inscription over your wrist, to give you a hint or two.”_

_It was probably a bad move to remind Thorin of his soulmark, because right after that, Thorin threw all politeness out of the proverbial window (there weren’t any in the room) and left the feast._

_The room suddenly turned very, very cold._

 

 Bilbo tried hard to understand Thorin, which wasn’t easy given that Thorin made it nigh impossible for anyone to figure out even a glimpse of what was going on inside of his mind. Bilbo knew that this adventure wasn’t going to be a bed of roses. They were more than a Prince and a commoner; they were practically two different worlds colliding. Thorin had many duties and responsibilities that Bilbo couldn’t even begin to imagine. Even in his leisure time, he wasn’t his own master. He was never not a Prince. It must have been crushing. Perhaps, Bilbo mused, Thorin’s heart was the only thing he’d had over the years that remained more or less his. He couldn’t choose what to become, where to live, whom to be loyal to – but at least he still could choose who to love. And now comes a little fellow that knows next to nothing about his culture, doesn’t know his language, the tales of his people – by Yavanna, who cannot even sing a song with him in a merry gathering – and lays a claim to his love, ripping away what might be the last free choice Thorin had left.

It was completely understandable that Thorin wouldn’t like him.

But the thing that puzzled Bilbo no end was the fact that if Thorin didn’t like him, didn’t want him, all he had to do was be indifferent. Coolly and decisively decline the courtship, have a talk with Bilbo and let him down like an adult. Perhaps they would have forged a friendship afterwards, when they got to know each other better. Instead of that, Thorin was anything but indifferent. He hated Bilbo with fervour he wasn’t even trying to hide.

Tea, Bilbo decided. Mint tea and maybe a bit of lukewarm broth and definitely crackers. Thinking will be easier when he got his stomach under control. Bilbo pleaded with the little blacksmith in his head for a moment of peace and made his shaky way to the kitchens.

 

*

 

“Mistress Beinta, you’re a goddess among Dwarrowdams,” Bilbo declared over the rim of the best cup of mint tea he’d ever had.

“Oi, watch that silver tongue of yours!” A red-headed Dwarf, with his beard braid laid over his stomach like a trophy, slapped Bilbo’s back with a good-natured laugh. Bilbo nearly toppled over from his chair and narrowly avoided spilling his tea. “This one is taken, get yourself another!”

“Just Beinta for you, Master Baggins.” The head cook smiled at him and added a few more bits of breadstuff onto his plate.

“In that case, it’s Bilbo for you. And no, Master Bombur, I’m not wooing your wonderful wife, please, don’t slap me aga- ah!”

“Ain’t wooin’ her!” Bombur laughed. “You don't have to bother with any more gifts for the Prince, Master Hobbit! You just sweet talk like that and your gonna have ‘im wrapped ’round your little finger in a week!”

“That would require said Prince ever listening to me, but thanks for your confidence,” Bilbo said, mostly into his tea. Bombur was busy loudly greeting his brother and his friends anyway.

His new friend, Bombur, was an architect, but he divided most of his time between the two loves of his life: his wife, and his food. Seeing as his wife was the head mistress of the kitchens, it was often a joint pleasure. The girth of Bombur’s waist bore witness to many a visit to his wife’s workplace, and for once, Bilbo found a Dwarf with whom he could fall in on the assertion that seven meals a day was very beneficial for one’s health.

Bombur’s brother, Bofur, was a miner, a jovial fellow with love for cheer, and thus very much to Bilbo’s taste, and where Bofur was, Ori’s brother Nori wasn’t trailing far away. And when Ori popped his head into the doorway with an uncertain smile, Bilbo was happy to wave him over.

Thorin would probably be appalled at seeing Bilbo associate with commoners. Well, Bilbo thought, let Thorin stew.

“There’s a rumour you showed our dear Princeling what the underside of the table looked like,” Bofur teased, the grin on his face matching the upturned side flaps of his favourite hat.

“The only reason I don’t know it as well is that Frérin took up all the space there,” Bilbo said truthfully and shuddered. “Your Princess is formidable.”

Every Dwarf save Ori guffawed with laughter. “Pity you dn't know any drinkin' songs!” Bofur exclaimed. Bilbo winced. The raucous cheer wasn’t agreeing with the still busy smithy in his head. But he couldn’t let the Dwarves think any less of the pride of Hobbits, could he now? He twitched his nose and lifted a finger.

“I wouldn’t say I don’t know any drinking songs, though I bet ours don’t have as many verses as the Dwarven ones have,” he amended.

“Oh?” Bofur started patting his pockets. “Will you teach us?” Soon he produced a small flute. Catching the sight of Bilbo’s pained expression, he seemed to remember what a hang-over was like and the flute disappeared again.

“Or we could teach you ours,” Nori drawled, and put another cracker in his mouth. Bilbo blinked. Where did Nori get the biscuit in the first place? He looked down at his plate and realised that from his once pile of crackers, only a woeful number of two remained.  

“Don't let those two teach you anythin’ about drillin’ yet untouched opals or polishin’ battleaxes,” Bombur cut in with a warning. “They ain’t about what they seem to be about.”

“Oh!” Bilbo exclaimed, putting on his best innocent expression. “Oh, do not fear. I wouldn’t. I would be dreadfully unable to retaliate. Us Hobbits, you know, we only have songs about flowers, and apple pies, and gurgling brooks, and birds in the meadows–”

The eyes of the Dwarves glazed over a little and some began to turn around and look for something to nibble on…

“–and then, of course, there are songs like this one–” and Bilbo drew in a deep breath and began to sing:

 

_I know of a strange bird without a single feather_

_A little bird that likes to nestle in that warm place nether._

_Wings like eggs and beakless head, on a curly roost_

_Petted by a pretty lass, the bird is sure to boost._

 

The company stared at him, connecting the dots, and then roared loud enough to bring the Mountain down on their heads. Bilbo pressed his hands to his ears and couldn’t help but to blush, feeling at the same time a tiny bit smug. That had been a success.

“Oho!” Nori said when he calmed down a bit and wiped his eyes. “And you, little Shireling, have you been – you know – teaching your egg-winged bird how to fly?”

Bilbo giggled and wondered if perhaps he still was a bit drunk. “Yes,” he admitted, “one of my distant cousins – great teacher, if I may say so.”

Bofur’s eyes took on a distant, dreamy look. “Oh, ripe, full-blown ladies...”

“I hope it doesn’t... disqualify me as a suitor,” Bilbo suddenly realised. What if the Dwarves didn’t condone affairs before marriage?

“No worries, lad,” Bofur clapped him on the shoulder. “After all, ye don't go into the deep mineshaft before you know your way with the pick.” And he winked.

“Ah, so it’s the same as with gardening,” Bilbo said with a too much emphasis on the last word for it to be innocent. “You don’t go spading untouched soil before you learn some tricks on a well-tended garden.”

“You don’t get to write epic poetry before you dull a couple of quills on copying old masters,” unexpectedly quipped the sweet voice of the little scribe, who until that moment was sitting quietly in the corner, shy as a mouse.

“Ori!” Nori covered his brother’s ears. “Mahal help you if Dori ever finds out that you’ve been – sharpening your quill in the Library!”

“I haven’t!”

“Lads, dion't get me started on baking soufflés...” Beinta remarked and the company dissolved in laughter.

Bilbo fervently hoped that Thorin wasn’t stalking him today.

 

*

 

The second courting gift would traditionally be made of gold or precious gems. Bilbo had been given a week this time instead of a day due to an intervention by the Wizard, who for once hadn’t been remiss in his duties as chaperone. As far as Thorin knew, the Halfling hadn’t visited the jewellers’ workshops once during that week, dedicating his time to wandering through Erebor, paying courtesy visits to prominent noble clans, making dubious acquaintances among the lower classes, and, according to his assigned guards, spending an unnatural amount of time in the greenhouses.

He’d also stopped asking for an opportunity to talk to the Prince. Thorin didn’t know why it bothered him so much. He ought to be pleased; that was what he wished. Yet he couldn’t shake off a vague sense of discontent. It made him feel... left out. Yes. Apparently the Halfling settled for winning over the King, buying himself his favour with cunningly selected courting gifts, and Thorin’s opinion didn’t matter to him anymore. Maybe he hadn’t been interested in him from the start, only using the courtship to worm his way into the Court.

He certainly knew how to warm the hearts of the lower classes to him. The Master of the Greenhouses was heaping praise on him whenever the Halfling came up in conversation, he practically became the librarians’ pet, and craftsmen at the Market spoke fondly of his generous purse and obvious distaste for haggling. He was everyone’s favourite, and Thorin didn’t trust it.

Even his own family had betrayed him.

“How can you like him so easily?” he asked Dís the day after that disastrous feast.

His sister looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Because he is likeable,” she replied at last.

“He is nothing but a weasel.”

“And you are plenty of things, but the only one coming to my mind now is a fool. It wouldn’t hurt you to appreciate his efforts to get to know us, to adjust, to fit. He’s trying so hard–”

“Too hard,” Thorin insisted. “Something is at play here. He may well be the Wizard’s puppet.”

Quite unexpectedly, Dís threw her arms around him and hugged him, hard. “You’re scared,” she told him.

“I am not–” Thorin tried to extricate himself but she held on tight.

“You like him, you do. And you’re scared that it is the Mark’s working, not you. Thorin, brother, the Marks do not rule your heart. They cannot make you feel anything. Yes, he might be the perfect one for you, but you don’t have to choose him. Nobody is manipulating you, especially not the Mark.”

“How would you know?” Thorin exploded. “You don’t have one, you are blessed enough not to have one!”

She stared at him, pleading in her eyes that reminded him painfully of their mother. “Brother–”

Thorin slammed the door behind him, and was already half-way down the corridor when he realised that he forgot to contradict her assumption that he liked the Halfling.

It didn’t matter. The first courting gift was a lucky shot, a fortuitous turn of luck. The Shire, Thorin knew, was an agricultural land, not rich in the treasures of the earth. It would be perhaps a bit painful to watch the Halfling present a bracelet of polished quartz beads or something similar, but at least it would be over.

 

*

 

Whatever Thorin had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t a writing set.

He had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that the workmanship was flawless this time. The Halfling’s love of books and everything scholarly for once transpired into something useful. A fine calfskin lapboard was framed in solid ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl and dotted with tiny freshwater pearls. Two pens had calligraphic silver tips; the bigger one was made of golden amber, smooth and opaque, with swirls of colour inside like frozen honey, whereas the smaller one was cut from some mineral Thorin did not know – it looked like green-tinted, smoked glass, but it was hard as obsidian and flared up with a bright green flame when he held it against the light. It felt vibrant under his fingers, an almost tingling sensation.

“We call it ‘Yavanna’s tears’. We believe that they fall from the sky,” he heard the Halfling say quietly, and when he lifted his eyes, he found his suitor sitting next to him, waiting patiently with an outstretched hand. On his palm, there lay a raw piece of this mineral, and it indeed looked like a tear drop frozen in the middle of a fall. Its surface was rough and warm, unlike diamonds and other precious stones that were cool to the touch because of their density, hardness and excellent conductivity of heat, and it thrummed with energy. Thorin picked it up from the Halfling’s palm. Their fingers brushed. The tingling under his skin intensified. It was the same energy, that heart beating so close under the skin of this little creature, and that tingle of the not-stone fallen from the sky of its homeland. He closed his fingers over the little pebble. It gave out heat, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. 

“There may be a grain of truth behind that legend,” said Thráin and gestured for the mineral to be brought to him. Thorin gave it over, strangely reluctant to do so.

“To me, it looks like obsidian, natural glass that you can find around volcanoes. Heat melts sand into glass droplets and throws it far and wide with the explosion.”

“It’s beautiful. I have never seen a hue of green like that in obsidian,” Dís said.

“Healers use it, in the Shire, but don’t ask me how. It is said to give strength of will and patience.”

“Certainly a valuable asset, when you want to write diplomatic letter with that pen,” Gandalf noted and Thorin’s eyes narrowed. Was the Wizard implying that the diplomatic relations of Erebor were lacking?

“For us Hobbits, the wealth of the Shire doesn’t lie hidden beneath the earth,” Bilbo said. “We can sometimes fish out a pearl from a river shell or stumble upon a piece of petrified resin deep in the woods, but we love all things that grow, and we love the river full of fish and the woods full of birdsong more than the gems they can hide. However, this gold–”

Bilbo’s words drew everyone’s eyes to the last item of the set, a paperweight of solid glass peppered with numerous flecks of gold, each piece no bigger than a half of the Halfling’s fingernail. It looked like golden snowfall frozen inside the glass sphere, and Thorin would have thought it beautiful, if at the same time the King hadn’t awoken from his slumber, his attention riveted by the only word that held any magic for him.

“It’s a river gold,” the Halfling continued, “carried down by the streams that spring in the Blue Mountains, not far from the borders of the Shire. Gandalf believes–” and he looked to his chaperone for support, “–that when a river is gold-bearing, there must be veins of gold near the springs. We Hobbits have no wish to mine in the Blue Mountains,” and here he took a deep breath, “thus know, O King, that this is my true courting gift, of which this writing set is merely a token: should your people ever wish to settle and mine in the Blue Mountains, they can expect support from the Shirefolk, and I would see to it that trade agreements will be made to your satisfaction.”

Thorin was – amazed, yes. He was beyond aggravation, because for feeling angry, there would have to be a reasonable cause for that anger, and this Halfling’s behaviour had surpassed the realm of reason long ago. Instead of presenting some shining necklace or bracelet, ultimately just another bauble onto the ever-growing pile of baubles in the Treasury, the Halfling was proposing a treaty between two nations – as if he were a leader of his people! How could he concoct such daring plans, what did he know about diplomacy, a mere landowner from the land with no king!

Moreover, why would the Dwarves of Erebor, the richest, safest and proudest kingdom on Middle Earth, want to establish a colony in some inferior mountains? Folly.

Thorin tried to say as much. “Why would we want to mine elsewhere? Save for Moria, which is lost to us, there is no place better than Erebor. The Mountain is far from being mined empty yet, and it already is twice as rich as any Dwarven kingdom in Middle Earth!”

“Twice the pride, double the fall,” he heard the Wizard mutter into his beard. With a sudden flare of fury, Thorin regretted the absence of his sword in the Council chamber. 

But it seemed that Thorin was the only one perceiving the two-facedness of the Wizard and the cunning in his plans. King Thrór seemed to be considering the offer, captivated by the mention of gold. Always more gold! Prince Thráin fell into a quiet discussion with Gandalf, from which Thorin only caught the words ‘Belegost’ and ‘abandoned’, and with a growing sense of horror, Thorin realised that Bilbo Baggins was about to be granted approval of his second courting gift. Against all odds, it looked that he could succeed in the courtship in the end, which was something Thorin didn’t think possible only a week ago.

He didn’t want to witness such a humiliation. Just like a week ago, he bowed to his grandfather and left.

Without any conscious thought, his steps had led him into the greenhouses. When he became aware of his surroundings, he hesitated. Well. Perhaps it was high time to confront the Halfling. Sure enough, there he approached: completely at ease, with a bounce to his steps, lips curled into a small determined smile. Thorin was going to wipe that right off his round face.

The gardeners had fled earlier at the sight of the Prince’s stormy expression, and he closed the big metal door behind the unsuspecting Halfling with a loud bang. The little creature startled, turning on the spot, one hand going for whatever reason into his waistcoat pocket. Too small a pocket to conceal a dagger, so Thorin let it slide. He marched up to the Halfling, using his height to his advantage.

“Do you think I cannot see through your designs?” Thorin snarled before Bilbo had any chance to ensnare him with his honed words. “Do you think I cannot see what is going on?”

The Halfling hooked his thumbs behind his braces and cocked his head to the side. He didn’t look afraid, only considering.

“Do you?” He countered with a question. “Know what’s going on, that is. How long is it since you’ve been around the Mountain, except for following me? How long is it since you last talked to the miners about why they are taxed a fixed sum, regardless of their gains, instead of tithing? How long is it since you’ve last been to the Market, where the prices on the black market are now several times higher than the regulated prices?  No, my Prince,” and Bilbo Baggins slowly shook his head, “I don’t think you have any idea about what is going on in your kingdom.”

Thorin saw red. “My kingdom is not your business. You are corrupting our King,” he accused Bilbo, “corrupting him with your empty promises of gold!”

“Forgive me for saying this, my Prince,” Bilbo Baggins took a few careful steps back, “but no promise of mine would be enough to corrupt your King, if he wasn’t already corruptible.”

Thorin growled and reached for his dagger, those words being to him as good admission of guilt as he was ever going to get, but when he next lifted his eyes, the Halfling was gone.   

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wee spoilery note: Thorin is only sixty at this time of the story, and thus very prone to illogical outbursts and all kinds of brattiness. However, drawing weapon on one’s soulmate is a very no-go, and he’s about to snap out of it and eat some crow in the first lines of the next chapter. I left the cliffhanger like this, because I am evil. 
> 
> The song is an almost literal translation of an authentic Moravian folk song ‘Vím já jedno ftáčisko’, incorporated in the collection of so called ‘ščeglivé písně’ (saucy songs). From the entire collection, this one was still the least naughty, the others would deserve explicit rating. When I researched songs for this chapter, I definitely wasn’t expecting that. 
> 
> The mineral ‘Yavanna’s tears’ is shaped after the mineral moldavite, uniquely found in Czech Republic and rarely in parts of Germany and Austria. It is basically a natural glass, formed from sand and earth melted by an impact of a meteorite and splashed wide around. Its shape resembles mostly tears as the pieces were cooled before they fell back to the ground. Though being brought into existence by a meteorite, they actually do not contain any extraterrestrial material. Only the Czech type is green; others found elsewhere are usually brown or dull grey. 
> 
>  


	6. Of Daggers and Swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my friend ArianeDeVere who fought a victorious battle against all the effusive commas I had let loose in this chapter:)

 

Putting on the little golden ring found in the tunnels under the Goblin town always felt like a punch to the gut – the kind of punch that winds you and has dark spots dancing in front of your eyes before your vision seeps back, slowly and from inside out like oil spill on the water. 

Except that with the ring on, the bleakness never fully cleared. It remained stuck to the shapes of the colourless world, every contour blurred and swimming. It made moving in the dark easier, for the things in the shadow world seemed to glow with their own light – but it wasn’t the warm, merry light of a candle or the steady, powerful light of a distant sun – this was a sickly light, cold and mute, reminding Bilbo of the luminescent fungus growing on decaying tree trunks deep in the Old Forest. 

Bilbo didn’t like it. Mindful of Gandalf’s advice, he used the ring sparingly. He didn’t like the sight of his own hands and feet turning fey; he didn’t like the whispers on the very edge of his consciousness that couldn’t be written off as the distant echo of some real conversation. And he definitely didn’t like the way people seemed to be spilling over their shapes when they moved, as if Bilbo was able to see their incorporeal self that somehow had a mind of its own, lingering behind when they hastened, or creeping ahead when they reached out. It was like seeing the ghost of their intentions or regrets – an insubstantial hand closing over the door handle a second before the real hand connected with it, or a shadow minutely sticking to the chair when its owner was already rising from it. It was disconcerting, and frightening, and Bilbo could never get used to that. 

And yet, having the ring on... it felt powerful. I’m seeing the truth of things, Bilbo thought. And nobody can see me, I am safe here. I could watch you, see your inner selves, see everything you keep hidden from the world, and then I could lord it over you– 

Bilbo sometimes despised himself for the thoughts that came to him with the ring on. Perhaps that was what he didn’t like the most about the ring: that under its spell, those bad, bad thoughts seemed... cherished. 

But no matter what this strange repulsion and addiction at once was, there were moments when the need to put it on came fast like lightning: _I will protect us,_ the ring whispered, and Bilbo’s finger had slipped through the golden band before Thorin could finish drawing out his dagger. 

It helped that it was only the ceremonial dagger, used in Court to cut seals from official documents and sometimes to stick it into the table in the formal declaration of conflict. Real weapons weren’t allowed in the Council Room, where Bilbo had presented his second courting gift, and the moment of distraction when Thorin averted his eyes from him to free the dagger from its unfamiliar, overly ornamental sheath allowed Bilbo to turn invisible and take a few hasty steps to the side. 

He expected rage. He expected vicious cursing and he already pitied the few plants around, for they were surely about to get slashed and uprooted in the furious search for his hiding place. 

What he didn’t expect was Thorin freezing in place, mouth hanging open and his eyes slowly widening and filling with something desperate. 

The dagger fell to the paved ground with a clatter, echoing hollowly in the half-world of the ring. Thorin, Prince under the Mountain, followed a moment after, his knees hitting the ground with a dull thud, and buried his face in his hands. 

“Halfling?” he called in a shaky voice, muffled by the heavily embroidered sleeves of his ceremonial robe. Then, clearer, but quieter, in an almost broken whisper: “....Bilbo?”

 

*

 

He drew a weapon on his soulmate. 

Even worse: Bilbo Baggins didn’t need to be his soulmate to be still under the protection of the laws of the Mountain, as a guest, as a suitor. 

Even if he was a proven traitor, even if he was caught with the royal blood dripping off his hands, he would still have to be brought forth to court, to face justice. 

Thorin wished their encounter had witnesses so he could be taken into the dungeons and relieved of his shame right away. Any Dwarf in the Kingdom, even the lowest servant, would be obliged to do so. Nobody would hesitate to arrest him; drawing a weapon on one’s own soulmate – the intention to kill his unarmed suitor… 

.... And for what? For a mere truth. 

It was panic and confusion that made him lash out in anger, denying the Halfling’s accusations. Yet, deep down, Thorin knew them to be true. His grandfather’s rule was ruthless in its surety, and his ever-growing love of gold had laid a heavy burden on the people of Erebor. Private miners, for generations used to giving one tenth of their gains to the Crown, now had to pay a fixed amount even though in some years the tax swallowed almost everything they earned. The balance of supply and demand on the Market was distorted: the lower classes were in want of basic things, unable to spend their meagre coin on the luxuries. The value of the standard silver coin with the King’s face on had plummeted in the over-abundance of hoarded gold. Erebor was slowly sinking into economic depression. 

Thorin saw it all, and yet on his best days he still tried to unsee it, convincing himself that it was just a phase, that his Grandfather was simply gathering resources for some grander plans, for a generous rebuild or an ambitious quest to retake one of their ancient dwellings – that it was anything other than pure greed, pointless passion amassing gold for no better purpose than to lay it on a pile. 

Even if he admitted it – what he was to do? His loyalty lay not only with his King, but with his kingdom as well. A rebellion would wreck it. And Thorin loved Erebor as fiercely as any other Dwarf and perhaps even more; for him it wasn’t only mines, markets, and the mantle of rock around it all, but something greater – a frame for both the wisdom of the past and the promise of the future, a link between the tombs at the foot of the Mountain and the lives of the yet unborn children, a continuation of tradition, an embodiment of everything it meant to be a Dwarf. This he wanted to protect, for this he strived to be the perfect heir: for no matter how far Thrór’s sanity was gone, Erebor was still worthy of Thorin’s loyalty. 

But knowing all this was one thing, and hearing it being hurled at him so bluntly – from a stranger whom he despised, no less – was another. It stung like salt rubbed in his wounds, and Thorin lashed out at that perceived hurt. Oh, how he abhorred himself right then. He was behaving no better than that exiled Dwarf from the little librarian’s story. How was he to rule a Kingdom when he couldn’t control his own impulses? 

He had to apologise. Perhaps then he would muster the strength to explain himself, to take a page out of the Halfling’s book and actually talk to him about his grievances and pain, but first he had to prove that he still had honour, and manners to speak of. He couldn’t allow his suitor to flee in fear, thinking Thorin a criminal. 

“Halfling?” he rasped, throat still half-closed with self-reproach. No, that wasn’t right. Wasn’t there always a hint of displeasure flicking over the Halfling’s face whenever he was called that? Another wave of shame washed over Thorin when he recalled the rude brush-off he had given his suitor at the feast. The Halfling had stood there, swaying a little, a high flush in his cheeks and a daring blaze in his eyes, dark honey curls plastered to his sweating forehead, and with a boldness spurred on by drink he had demanded that Thorin use his name– 

“Bilbo?” Thorin tried again. 

No answer came. 

Thorin lifted his head and fought to calm his breathing. The greenhouses were silent, not a rustle of leaves, not a snap of a twig betrayed anyone’s presence other than his own. The vegetation at this time of year was low and sparse-growing, many vegetable beds already empty as their season had passed. As far as Thorin could see, he was alone. 

Had Bilbo already left? Was Thorin so immersed in his self-loathing that he had missed him slipping out of the room? But no, the heavy metal door he remembered slamming behind Bilbo when he came in was still closed. He would have heard the creak of hinges or the click of the latch, wouldn’t he? 

Perhaps he was imagining the entire encounter. Perhaps his nerves, frayed by the King’s acceptance of the second courting gift, and already worn thin with worries over the state of the Kingdom, had played a foul trick on him. Relief began to swell within Thorin, relief at not being caught at his lowest. For a moment he felt light as a feather, that there would be no recrimination, his blunder didn’t happen - but a dreadful realisation cut short the easing of his soul and his shoulders dropped even lower. Falling prey to violent, paranoid hallucinations could mean only one thing: the clutches of madness, the curse of his line, were upon him. 

Battered by exhaustion and emotionally drained, Thorin mechanically got back to his feet and picked up the dagger ready to put it back in its sheath. 

“If you hear me, pray show yourself,” he whispered into empty air, against hope, one last time. He didn’t know what he wished more: for the Halfling to be there and thinking only the worst of him, or to be proven the toy of his own mind and on the verge of madness. 

For a second, he fancied himself hearing a stutter of breath, but when he turned sharply towards the sound, no one was there.  

 

*

 

The week following the presentation of his second gift was the strangest time Bilbo had ever had in Erebor. 

For one, Thorin no longer avoided him, but his conduct was far from civil. For the first few times they met, Thorin seemed uncharacteristically jumpy, giving him odd looks and more than once opening his mouth only to clamp it shut again and bite back whatever words were trying to get out. 

Bilbo thought he knew why. It must have been the scare of Thorin’s life, his enemy disappearing into thin air in the blink of an eye. Bilbo felt a little guilty about that. Judging by the way Thorin had collapsed onto the ground afterwards, he had seemed to be genuinely regretting his outburst and perhaps even getting a fine taste of a much deserved humble pie. Bilbo really should have revealed himself when Thorin had called for him, he should. It would have been the kind thing to do. 

However, the truth was that Bilbo was far from feeling kind in that moment – he was simply scared. When he heard Thorin’s choked whisper praying for him to show himself, he almost called out to reassure him, he almost obeyed. But then Thorin whipped around, eager to catch sight of him, and light flashed on the naked blade of the dagger still in his hand. Bilbo’s heart shrank and the words died on his lips, and his goodwill was silenced under the scream of his ring – _Don’t let him see us!_  

And then, before Bilbo could gather his wits, Thorin had sighed, turned, and left the room. 

When they met the next day, Thorin hadn’t tried to apologise for the vile things he had said in the greenhouses – and Bilbo told himself he was a fool for ever having expected that – but he also had expressed his thanks to Bilbo for the thoughtfulness and taste behind his gifts. 

Bilbo figured that it was a fair enough result of the greenhouse incident, and if he felt a little bad about how he had handled it, Thorin was obviously feeling the same way on his part, so all things considered, everything was fine.   

 

*

 

“I’m really, really not sure about this–” Bilbo tried to argue as he half-paced, half-jogged behind Gandalf on their way to the training grounds. 

“Well, I am,” Gandalf countered uncompromisingly and threw open the large door at the end of a corridor winding around a theatre-like room, lined with rows of rough seats around a large circular sand pit in the middle. He let Bilbo through and his stern face lit up in a genial smile when he spotted a group of Dwarves waiting below – a distinguished-looking elder with a mane of raven hair, still without a speck of grey, and two younglings, no more than fifty by Bilbo’s guess, obviously his sons, each bearing a few traits of their father’s countenance but somehow managing to look entirely different from each other.   

“There you are,” Gandalf harrumphed. “My old friend Fundin will take care of you, Bilbo.” 

“I don’t think I need–” 

“Nonsense,” Gandalf cut him short again. “Remember: the way to a dwarf’s heart is through his armoury. You want him to talk to you, but for that you need to have at least one thing in common to talk about! Prince Thorin is training to be a master swordsman; we can’t have you knowing next to nothing about swordsmanship and in constant danger of poking your own eyes out when you get near a sword.” 

“I am not that clumsy!” Bilbo protested heatedly.  “I made it through the Goblin tunnels–” 

“–with your little sword’s blade still as clean as we found it,” Gandalf finished for him. “Which is a good thing,” he lowered his voice meaningfully, “for true courage is not knowing when to take life, but when to spare one. Needless bloodshed won’t make you a warrior, Bilbo – but a bit of fighting skills may spare you shedding your own blood in a real fight, so off with you!” And with that, Gandalf pushed Bilbo down the stairs, nearly tripping him right into the arms of the three Dwarven warriors. 

“Do not fear, Master Baggins,” Fundin, the elder Dwarf, grinned at him when Bilbo found his breath and balance again – his dignity he had written off as a lost cause already. 

“My younger, Dwalin, will have only a wooden sword today, so there will be no bloodshed – I cannot promise you no bruises, though.” 

Bilbo held out the Elven dagger Gandalf had chosen from him from the Troll hoard. “But mine is sharp,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t want to hurt your son.” 

Dwalin, the younger of the two sons, a big burly Dwarf with an extravagant crest of hair rising above his otherwise cleanly shaved skull, looked for a moment as if he had swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. Then he snorted. The other brother, a shorter and stouter fellow with a nicely coming beard, pressed a fist to his mouth in a fit of coughing, which Bilbo suspected was a poor disguise for laughter. Then he winked at Bilbo and sniggered, “Don’t you worry about hurting anyone with that – it’s hardly more than a letter opener!” 

“Enough.” Fundin stepped in before Bilbo could work himself into proper outrage. “Balin, make yourself either useful or scarce.” 

Obediently, Balin trotted off into an adjoining room and after a moment he emerged with a small leather helmet. Despite his doubts, it turned out that it fitted Bilbo perfectly. From the matching smirks the two brothers were giving him, Bilbo suspected that it was a child’s size, but honestly – it wasn’t his fault that the rest of the world was so ridiculously overgrown! 

Dwalin jumped into the sand circle, swinging his wooden sword in large circles to loosen his shoulders, and Fundin led Bilbo to stand in the middle, instructing him on the proper stance and the basic defence position. 

“Now, Master Baggins. Hold out your sword and try to parry Dwalin’s attack. Remember what I told you about the wrists.” 

WHACK! 

The little steel sword ended stuck in the ground mere inches from Bilbo’s foot and he jumped and wrung his hands together, trying to rub away the tingle in his fingers. 

“The wrists, Master Baggins!” 

Bilbo sighed inwardly. This was going to be a long day.

 

*

 

Thorin, son of Thráin, thought he knew when he was being played. A lifetime of having Dís and Frérin for siblings had taught him caution and prudence. He didn’t mind a game as long as he knew the rules – as long as there were any rules. But in dealing with Bilbo Baggins, Thorin found himself navigating an uncharted territory. 

The Halfling was soft but not weak; there was steel in him, bending but not breaking, hidden under his plush velvet jackets. He was orderly to the point of fussy, cleverly balancing the thin line between outspoken and brash, his grin was like a ray of sunlight in winter, bright but biting, and he was a natural listener – but although he seemed able to strike a camaraderie easily and with almost anyone, Thorin suspected that his heart remained guarded from everyone save for his most trusted friends, and that such friends were few in Bilbo Baggins’ life. 

That, Thorin could understand. Very few of his peers had been ever interested only in Thorin, son of Thráin, and not in Thorin, heir to the Throne. Time after time Thorin was brought to the realisation that this or that friendship was only a means to an end, an easier path up the ranks of nobility, a warm place in the Council, a good bargain between the Guilds. As a child, Thorin had very few friends. There were the Fundinul brothers, of course, Balin with his smug superiority at being better at calligraphy, Khuzdul, history – well, anything to do with studying, if Thorin was honest with himself – and young Dwalin with his near hero-worship of the Prince; but other than them… 

And now he had a soulmate. Someone who was supposed to be his best friend, his other half, his... everything. 

Someone who had been getting on his nerves from day one. 

Wizard’s pupil. Thorin chewed on the words inside his head. With each passing day he believed even more that he hadn’t hallucinated the whole encounter in the greenhouses. Wasn’t the Halfling in the Wizard’s ward? Thorin didn’t know much about magic, but surely there was a spell allowing one to vanish into thin air. Perhaps the Halfling could walk through walls. The secrets he could have learned… 

Thorin didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy. His conduct in the greenhouses had been outrageous, entirely dishonourable. Bilbo Baggins was well within his rights to call off the suit and denounce Thorin to his father – and yet he had chosen to keep his silence. As if the knowledge that he could send Thorin to his doom with a single word was enough for him. Was he really that stupid, or was he simply waiting? 

The way he was watching. Thorin wasn’t far from believing that he could feel the Halfling’s eyes on him nearly all the time, flashing out from under long lashes when they met, staring unrelentingly from some shadowed corner when Thorin thought he was alone. He could feel the stare on his back like pinpricks of heat covered in goose bumps. The Halfling was everywhere he turned, his cheerful laughter echoed through the dining hall, his scribbling was left on the scattered pages in the Library’s study room, his excited chatter about food mingled with the clatter of the kitchens. He seemed to plan his walks around Erebor purposefully so he would run into Thorin on every other staircase. Always just nodding in lieu of bowing, cheeky grin instead of a demure smile, Bilbo asked for directions even though he must know his way around the Mountain blindfolded by now – and then he trotted off, Mahal knows where, leaving Thorin irked for no discernible reason. 

Thorin would never admit it, even to himself, but he almost dreaded those encounters. He had never felt so wrong in his own skin, suddenly too tight for him, he had never had his most favourite and well-worn clothes chafing at his neck like a collar. Speech was never his strong suit, he believed in actions, not words, but lately he’d been finding himself at a loss for not only words, but his very breath. It was a strange affliction, incurred solely by the Halfling’s presence, and Thorin was inclined to believe that it was the Wizard’s own magic behind this sudden malady, Gandalf’s machinations behind the smokescreen that was Master Baggins. 

By Maker above, just thinking about him made the hair on his nape stick to the cold and wet skin. Perhaps he was really coming down with something. If so, then there was nothing better for it than to burn oneself out in a few rounds of sparring. Dwalin was sure to be there at this time of day. Thorin left his heavy cloak in his chambers and headed to the training grounds. Dry sand under his boots, clear ringing of steel clashing on steel, sweat dripping down his face and not a foot hair of the Halfling in sight: that was what he needed.

 

*

 

Thorin barged through the door, pulling on his gauntlets and opening his mouth to call for Dwalin, when he heard something that made him stop dead in his tracks. 

“I think I’m getting the hang of it!” 

“You think!” That was Dwalin’s voice, gruff as ever but unmistakably amused. 

Lord Fundin was leaning against the banisters and twirling the ends of his beard between his fingers. “Go on, then! One, two, six!” he shouted and the pair on the grounds got into motion. 

Thorin watched, frozen halfway between disappointment over the loss of his reprieve and curiosity at this unexpected opportunity. Nobody had noticed him yet. 

He watched as the Halfling swung his sword a couple of times in a passable approximation of the proper blows, backing steadily under Dwalin’s advance, when suddenly Dwalin kicked out and swept Bilbo’s feet from under him, making him land squarely on his back with a breathless “Ooof!” The shiny dagger fell from Bilbo’s hand and Dwalin planted his feet wide above him, pointing the end of his wooden sword at his neck. 

“Yield!” he leered, rather unnecessarily, as the Halfling was already on his back and no longer holding his weapon. 

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Bilbo flashed his teeth in a sharp grin and kicked up his large foot, full force, right between Dwalin’s parted legs. 

Thorin half expected Bilbo being run through, dull practice sword or not, as Dwalin doubled over, but when his sword stuck deep in the sand, Bilbo’s head was no longer there – with a surprising amount of agility the Halfling had slid down, rolled over and used the tails of Dwalin’s tunic to scramble up the warrior’s back. Dwalin straightened and tried to shake him off but that only brought that ridiculous crest of hair well into the Halfling’s reach, which he immediately put to good use by grabbing the hair and pulling himself up. He climbed the Dwarf like a tree, fast as a squirrel, and when Dwalin roared at the pain in his scalp and yielded to the pull, Bilbo sank his teeth into the meaty lobe of one exposed ear. 

“Enough!” Dwalin howled and dropped his practice sword. 

Bilbo let go and hopped down, shaking the sand out of his sleeves and grinning like the cat that had got the cream. Dwalin was feeling his ear for blood but there was none; only a set of indentation marks in a perfect semi-circle, already red and slowly turning purple. 

“It was worth it, making you lose your weapon at least once,” Bilbo quipped, nudging the wooden sword with his toes and prodding delicately at something between his teeth. 

“You... sneaky bugger!” Dwalin laughed. “That was underhanded! You were already beaten!” 

Balin, standing next to his father and currently holding his sides that must be aching with the force of his laugh, wiped the corners of his eyes and exclaimed, “Looks like our future Consort has found the one weakness you didn’t know about!” 

At the mention of the word _consort_ the world finally caught up with Thorin. He snapped his mouth shut, finished pulling on his gauntlets and forced himself to walk down the rest of the stairs in slow, measured strides. A quick jerk of the Halfling’s head indicated that his presence had been noticed. The Dwarves turned to him at once and Lord Fundin nodded in greeting. 

“So this is how the Melekhân fight?” Thorin asked, infusing his voice with as much contempt as he could muster. “Without honour?” 

The victorious grin disappeared from Bilbo’s face like sun hiding behind a cloud. He tipped his head back, eyes narrowed, and replied: “I’ve met Trolls, and Orcs, and Goblins on my way here, O Prince, and none of them had any honour to speak of.” 

“Your enemies won’t always have honour, or rules, Thorin!” Lord Fundin stepped in, brow drawn in a severe frown. “You would do well remembering that all is fair in war.” 

Shame at being reprimanded in front of his friends prickled its sharp thorns under Thorin’s skin, and a fresh tide of anger rose within him. Even Lord Fundin, his lifelong protector and faithful supporter of the family, was championing the Halfling! 

“And you,” Fundin turned to Dwalin, “I hope you’ll remember today’s lesson. It doesn’t matter if your enemy holds onto their weapon or not: as long as they breathe, the fight is not over.” 

“And lesson number two – you should really get rid of that hair,” Balin cackled. “It’d be better to shave it all off and get a nice tattoo instead!” 

“Thank you for your time and care, my Lord,” Bilbo said to Fundin, though his eyes were still fixed on Thorin. “But I’m afraid we Hobbits really aren’t made for swordfight.” 

“That’s true, my lad,” the old Dwarf smiled. “There are only so many ears you can bite before someone drives a sword through you.” 

“It matters not,” Thorin thundered, determined to have the last word. “A Dwarven warrior strikes to kill. He doesn’t allow his enemy a second chance.”

 

*

 

Bilbo sank deeper along the rounded curves of the enormous travertine tub, water sloshing against his collarbones with the movement, and tipped back his head to rest it on the edge. He closed his eyes and heaved a long, deep breath. Erebor bathhouses were as much heaven as the training grounds had been hell. 

There was still sand in his hair and behind his ears. Bilbo made a weak attempt to lift his arms. The muscles, sore from the strain of holding up his little sword again and again for a couple of hours, now nearly cramped. With only himself for company, Bilbo finally admitted defeat, gave way to laziness and slid all the rest of the way underwater. 

He emerged a couple of moments later and once again reclined on the shallow side of the tub. Warm water dripped from his curls and his eyebrows. With a blissed out grin, Bilbo opened his eyes and let them roam around the bathhouse. 

The room was huge, as was nearly every public facility in Erebor. A mosaic ceiling hung high above, lined with symmetrical alcoves that must have been housing ventilation shafts to conduct away steam and vapours. A heating system must have been hidden under the tiles of the floor as they were warm to touch and, contrary to the rest of the Mountain, actually pleasant to walk on barefoot. Many tubs, small and large, hot, tepid and cold, as well as a countless number of washbasins and water jugs, awaited their daily customers. For now though, Bilbo was the only one here bathing and the enormous room was filled only with the echoes of his sighs of contentment which were not so well suppressed as his Baggins upbringing would warrant. 

When Bilbo had found out that the royal guest rooms were provided only with a basin to wash his hands and face (and a rather oversized chamber pot which had made him laugh when he first had to use it, because of the unsettlingly accurate rendering of the Woodland Elvenking’s likeness painted on the bottom), he instantly missed his cosy copper bathtub and the elaborate bathroom plumbing of Bag End. Later, when he realised how many Dwarves lived inside of Erebor, households literally stacked one on top of another, Bilbo had to admit that this solution made sense. It certainly was a stretch on a respectable Hobbit’s sensibilities to watch other Dwarves leave their clothes in the changing rooms and parade around the bathhouse as naked as the day they sprang from stone, but with the help of a conveniently large sheet and some clever scheduling of his visits, Bilbo had so far escaped any major embarrassment. 

Not that the Dwarves ever harboured any inklings of embarrassment whatsoever. Not they. Awfully unabashed lot, Bilbo decided as he squinted up through the vapours milling above the water surface in his tub onto a large statue dominating the centre of the bathhouse. Carved in milk white marble and black polished basalt (Bilbo’s assigned guard turned out to be a rather talkative Dwarf and after two weeks surrounded by stone Bilbo was able to put a name to whichever rock he stumbled upon), two larger-than-life figures resided among the bathtubs: a broad-hipped Dwarrowdam reclining on a low chaise, and a very virile looking Dwarf resting at her feet, his head in her lap. The Dwarf’s hair, immaculately captured to the last lock in gold plating, was fanned over her underbelly and thighs, and his own bareness was tokenly covered by the folds of an alabaster sheet – a composition for modesty’s sake, Bilbo surmised, since the bathhouse was visited by little Dwarflings as well. 

Bilbo took in the apparent Dwarven beauty standards and sighed. There was no way he would ever be taken for attractive by any Dwarf. His petite body could never compare to that hard round skull, strong jaw, broad shoulders, barrel-shaped chest, thighs thick as tree trunks – and those absurdly dainty feet. 

Bilbo’s appearance was more than passable for a Hobbit – in a land where your sustenance relied on what you grew, and when some winters could stretch for longer than the stock in the pantries, having a plump belly was seen as a sign of wisdom and experience, because some years it could be the only thing to see you through the harsh season. But it didn’t matter if he was round or trim, he would always lack the build and muscle of Dwarves. That much had become pretty clear on the training grounds. Dwalin was still but a youth and Bilbo had won one round against him, one round, and even that only thanks to sleight and no small amount of luck. 

And he still could feel the unsavoury taste of chewing on Dwarven hide on the back of his teeth. 

But it was worth it, Bilbo grinned to himself and stretched in the gloriously warm water, it was totally worth the stunned look on Thorin’s face. 

Of course Bilbo had noticed him as soon as the Prince barrelled through the door. Frankly, Bilbo was surprised that no one else had spotted him as well. It was perhaps a sign of Bilbo’s poor concentration in the fight, but on the other hand he had long ago come to the conclusion that hearing wasn’t one of the best assets of the Dwarrows. So notice him he did, and if it made him trip over his feet, Dwalin was none the wiser, mainly because Bilbo had been tripping steadily throughout the entire sparring exercise. 

But Thorin had not seen that. He had barged into the arena in time to see some of Bilbo’s beginner’s errors, but he hadn’t seemed to mind them much. Instead, he had stood there, wide-eyed like a deer in the woods when a hunter jumps unexpectedly from the bushes right in front of it. It was a very becoming look on the Prince, if you asked Bilbo. 

If Bilbo was being honest with himself, and in the bath he usually was, this courtship had long passed its purpose – to prove King Thrór wrong in his arrogant assumption that Hobbits were good for naught – and had slowly but inexorably evolved into a much more personal quest for him. Those three gifts – one of steel, one of gold, and one that should surpass them both – weren’t meant to give him the right to marry Thorin, no. They were the opportunity to prove himself worthy, to give him the right to ask. And now Bilbo could admit that – once he asked –he wished that Thorin would say yes. 

Thorin, with his scowling regal brow and storm blue eyes and haughty mouth that, as Bilbo suspected, was saying something entirely different than Thorin had meant to say nearly half the time. Bilbo closed his eyes and sighed at his own foolishness. Falling for a Dwarf Prince. If only his Mother could see him. 

And yet, Bilbo couldn’t help but feel slightly hopeful. It seemed that Thorin had warmed up to him a fraction during the last week. He actually remembered his name, which was twice as hilarious because he was literally born with the knowledge of it, but yes, now he remembered to use it. He no longer avoided Bilbo; it even looked as if he was purposefully seeking encounters with him, and Bilbo might have been deluding himself but it definitely looked like Thorin had been... flustered, a couple of times. Antsy. Yes, definitely affected.   

Bilbo shook his head, drops of water landing everywhere, and gave the stink eye to the marble ideal Dwarf in front of him. Perhaps Bilbo had a chance after all, his Hobbitish looks notwithstanding, especially when Thorin wasn’t exactly on a par with that ideal himself. 

 _Speak of the wolf, and the wolf is on your doorstep_ , the old gaffers in the Shire used to say. There was certainly some wisdom to it, as the swinging door leading to the changing rooms opened all of a sudden and the very object of Bilbo’s recent musings appeared in the doorframe, wearing nothing but his mighty scowl. 

Bilbo involuntarily swallowed a mouthful of soapy water in his haste to get up and cover himself with a sheet. Thorin, on his part, managed to take two steps inside the bathhouse before he noticed Bilbo in the tub. Upon the sight he froze, like a hare under the shadow of a hawk, and then he turned his back on Bilbo (which barely helped matters, if you asked the Hobbit) with a sharp shout in Khuzdul and a frustrated yell: 

“Curse you, Halfling! Am I to find no peace in my own Kingdom?”

 


	7. Of Oaths Taken

 

It was too much. It was all too much.

Thorin stood, shaking with frustration, and squeezed his eyes shut against the image of pink, hairless skin. Behind him, he heard water splashing, the rustle of fabric, the smacking sound of wet bare feet on stone floor, and he knew he should leave immediately but his feet wouldn’t obey him. His knees felt like clay, the back of his thighs burned, his stomach curled on itself with a stony weight, he couldn’t draw enough breath, and his hairline itched with sweat that had nothing to do with the humidity in the bathhouse. He wanted to flee.

But Thorin was so tired of fleeing.

Something in Thorin had snapped when he entered the bathhouse and found his suitor inside. All the burdens of the past few weeks, the shame this courting brought him, the betrayal of his family, the fear of recrimination for his lack of control, the ceaseless watching – had all culminated in this single moment, breaking something inside Thorin and making his head swim with sudden weightlessness. His skin still felt tight and hot like leather stretched in steam before it was wrapped around a sword handle, and he could hear his heart hammering in his ears, but he no longer wanted to hide from it. He wanted to gather all those unwelcome sensations like annoying metal shavings, throw them into the forge of his fury, hammer a sharp spike out of them and drive it through the Halfling’s puny chest.

He would confront the Halfling and purge this plague of him once and for all.

Thorin dug his fingernails into his palms and slowly, deliberately turned back. His suitor was still at the bathtub, trousers hastily pulled onto wet skin, braces hanging loosely from his shoulders, trying to button up his shirt and tuck the shirttails into his waistband all at once. Water still dripped from the curls that he didn’t have time to dry, his cheeks were flushed and he kept his eyes studiously trained anywhere but at Thorin. This false modesty was infuriating.

“I was just getting finished,” he said in a rushed voice, “so you can, you know, don’t mind me–”

“But I do mind you,” Thorin growled. The vast room embellished the thunder in his voice with a malicious echo. “I mind you very much.”

He found that he could move and he took two steps closer, straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders to use the height he had on the Halfling to his advantage.

Bilbo Baggins left his mouth hanging open for a moment at the sudden interruption and cast a befuddled look around, as if he was confused by the rise in tension in the room that Thorin could feel like lightning, crackling high under the ceiling and dancing all over his skin. But, as countless times before, the Halfling did not back down under Thorin’s advance. The infuriating creature was like a spring, coiling and lashing out with more strength the more you pushed it. Thorin could see the moment when Bilbo caught up on the change and became aware of Thorin’s intent – his fussing stopped, his eyes darkened and his lips pursed, the muscles in his jaw working.

“I mind your impudence, I mind your temerity, I mind your endless ignorance– ”

“Excuse me!” Bilbo Baggins exclaimed, embarrassed blush on his cheeks giving way to the flush of indignation. “You have walked in on me, not the other way around, and if you dislike my presence so much, perhaps then you shouldn’t seek it out on every opportunity!”

“I do no such a thing!” Thorin relished in the way the Halfling’s eyes widened at the intensity of his voice. “It is you – throwing yourself in my way at all times! I have had enough of it!”

The Halfling was already opening his mouth but faced with the force of Thorin’s outburst he clamped it shut, swallowing back whatever words of protest have been rising to his tongue. He blinked a couple of times, his nose twitching, and then – to Thorin’s utter astonishment – he burst out laughing.

“You dare to laugh in my face?” Thorin felt like a hammer poised above an anvil, ready to strike. The silly creature did not know what fate he was spinning for himself with his light-hearted laugh.

“Yes! I mean–” Bilbo Baggins wiped the wet curls away from his forehead and attempted a serene face, only to be betrayed by the twitching of the corners of his impudent mouth. “It’s you. I had hoped – yes, I did – but I had no idea how much on your mind I’ve been, Thorin.”

He’s said the last words with a sudden flash of his dark eyes from under his long lashes, sly and coy at once. The name slid from his tongue like a drop of honey mead, velvety and heady. It was the first time Bilbo had called him by name as he was restricted to the official titles during their supervised meetings.  Thorin had gone to great lengths to ensure that they never actually met in private, and when they met in the halls Thorin made sure that there never was time to exchange many words. Now, it tugged at something deep in Thorin’s chest and he suffered a sharp stab of longing – that he would hear it again, again and again, in the future, the sound of his name slipping from his soulmate’s lips.

He recoiled from the thought. Wanting something was a weakness begging to be exploited, a weakness he couldn’t afford to have. He was the heir of Erebor, he should want nothing from the Halfling.

“It is ‘my Prince’ to you, Halfling.”

“Oh, I think not.” Bilbo Baggins stepped closer, holding Thorin’s eyes like a dare. Thorin’s bareness didn’t seem to bother him anymore. Thorin certainly didn’t mind it; he was a Dwarf, comfortable in his own skin.

“That’s why I intrigue you. Don’t deny it!” He lifted one finger and halted it an inch from poking Thorin’s chest. “It’s the truth. I’m the only one who doesn’t grovel on their knees before you, aren’t I? Well, _Thorin_ , hear this: you are not _my_ Prince, I do not bow to your ancestry or rank, and so far, I haven’t found a single thing about you worth kneeling for!”

Thorin found himself momentarily at a loss for words under the assault of such brazenness. The Halfling, on the other hand, seemed on fire. His eyes blazed like dragon’s gorge and his lips were like open floodgates, the calamity of the words coming out calculated to cause the worst damage.

“You’re one to talk about ignorance!” he ranted. “Has nobody told you, during that entire education you Dwarrows so like to brag about, that the word Halfling is perceived as an insult by us? We are Hobbits, and I’ll have you know I’m not half of anything!”

Thorin snarled like a trapped beast but pushed away all thought of backing down. He caught the Halfling’s hand, still flailing in front of his chest, and stilled it with the force of his grip.

“What you are, wholly and utterly, is an infuriating, conceited, intolerable–”

“Projecting, now, are we?”

Thorin did not know how a grin on such a round, beardless face could look so dangerous.

“You have set your eyes much higher than you should have ever dreamt to!”

“Well, someone has to, seeing how you never care to look down past the tip of your big regal nose.”

Red dots began to dance around the edges of Thorin’s vision. “I hate you,” he forced out with what felt like the last air in his lungs. The bird-like heartbeat under his fingers quickened but it was nothing compared to the mad gallop of his own heart.

The Halfling cocked his head to the side and lifted one eyebrow. “I’m almost tempted to believe you,” he said in a low, conspiratorial tone, “but it seems, _my Prince_ , that I’ve found something about you worth kneeling for, after all.”

With that, he lifted his free hand and placed it lightly on Thorin’s chest. Thorin gasped. For a moment, the world only existed in those five points of barely there contact, at once splitting him apart and melting him back together. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck rising, shivers running through the core of his very bones. And then Bilbo slid his hand down onto his belly and lower, lower still, fingertips scorching their path through the thick hair there, until they stopped just an inch shy of where Thorin was hot, hard and throbbing with want.

Everything crystallised into focus.

Thorin was no stranger to the pleasures of the flesh. He had had discreet professionals coming to his bed for the night, paid handsomely to teach him everything a royal heir should know, and he knew the easy flirtation of just one evening and the light-hearted mornings after with the companions of foreign dignitaries visiting Erebor. But never before had he truly wanted someone, wanted them with such force that it obscured his senses and obliterated his reason – never before had he needed someone as badly as he needed to breathe.

Wanting was a weakness, he should not…

Bilbo was still holding his gaze, pupils blown wide, lips parted in a smug grin, his fingers posed as a question over the place where all of Thorin’s frustration, agitation, and irritation had coalesced into a raging fire of feral want, and Thorin gave in. Just this once, he told himself, just this once to quench the hot steel of his need and make himself all the harder for it, like a blade drawn from the forge and thrust into a pail of cold water. He let go of the Halfling’s hand, grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands and pushed him down.

 

Bilbo’s knees folded under him without resistance and Thorin had to throw his head back and bite his lip at the first touch of hot, silky wetness on him. But quickly he forced his eyes open and looked back down, the sight of his loathed enemy finally on his knees, curls tangled between Thorin’s thick fingers buried in the hair at the crown of the Halfling’s head, too tempting to let it pass. Bilbo was so much smaller than a Dwarf and he couldn’t fit much of Thorin’s length into his mouth comfortably, but Thorin spared him nothing.

Molten gold coursed through his veins, the tide rising and ebbing with the slide and pull on his flesh, and vindictive glee coloured the edges of his arousal when he saw the tears prickling in the corners of Bilbo’s eyes, when he felt the tight throat constricting and the little body shuddering with the fight for air. But still Bilbo held on, foolishly and stubbornly, fingers digging into the soft flesh above Thorin’s hipbones, building the heat of his desire like great bellows fuelling the fire in the forge. Thorin trembled with vicious urge to take his pleasure and give none back, to break him, to debase him completely–

–but still the roar of his senses was not enough to silence the small treacherous voice whispering to him that he could have this, not in resentment but in mutual passion, if he only asked. That warm mouth welcoming him so willingly, so perfectly… Thorin was taught to be a gentle, considerate lover, always keeping low the fire in his blood, but as he looked into Bilbo’s sparkling eyes he saw that Bilbo did not want his restraint. There was an answering fire in his eyes, he wanted all of Thorin’s desire, all of Thorin, he wanted Thorin just as he was–

–and then his peak was upon him, fast like the crack of a whip. Thorin saw white lightning at the back of his eyelids, his release sudden and intense like a blade piercing through his guts, and he spent himself with a shout that rippled over the water surface of all the tubs around them.

When his vision cleared, he found himself curled on the floor, supported by the Halfling’s arms, ears filled with the steady beat of a heart that wasn’t his own. Bilbo was running his fingers through his hair, over and over, and whispering soothingly: “Shhhh... I’ve got you... Everything’s fine, I’ve got you...” 

The gold in Thorin’s veins dissolved in a cold, acidic wash of shame. How could he have thought, even for a moment, that he had been the one in power here? That he’d reduced Bilbo to tears – that he took anything from him? It was Thorin who was reduced to his basest needs, it was Thorin who gave himself over and succumbed to mindless passion like a beast, it was Thorin who was now left weak and trembling, bare and exposed.

The Halfling had seduced him with nothing but a touch and a few well-played mind games.

Thorin could not comprehend how the one who was supposed to complement him, to enhance him, was so damnably good at bringing forth the very worst within him.

“I’ve got you,” Bilbo repeated and Thorin shoved him away, staggering to his feet and cursing the liquid quality of his bones, now that he had his release. Bilbo looked up at him, his half-buttoned shirt soaked through with bath water and splattered with Thorin’s seed. For the first time of his stay in Erebor there was a mix of confusion and hurt in those dark blue eyes, and Thorin wanted to feel victorious – but he only felt sick.

“You will never have me,” he spat and walked away, disappearing behind the swinging doors where nobody could see him breaking into run.  

 

 

*

 

 

“Bilbo, my boy, what’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, Gandalf.”

“Now now. You should know better than to ‘nothing’ a Wizard, my dear fellow.”

Bilbo stared straight ahead, tugging at the loose curls around his ears absentmindedly, as if he believed they could grow long enough in time for the braiding ceremony.

“Gandalf, do you ever feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?”

“I cannot say I do.” Gandalf’s eyes twinkled. “I’m not a Hobbit.”

“Nice, that one,” Bilbo huffed, but Gandalf could see that his little teasing has fallen flat. Bilbo had looked uncharacteristically subdued for the past two days, his previously ready disposition to expect the best in all things was all but gone. Gandalf didn’t know what might have caused such a change but he suspected that the fact that there’d been seen neither hide nor hair of Thorin for the same two days had at least something to do with it.

“Chin up, Bilbo. Remember, it’s your birthday.”

For some reason, this reminder seemed to sadden Bilbo even more. “I’m sick and tired of giving away gifts,” he muttered. Gandalf frowned. For some reason, it didn’t feel as if Bilbo was merely talking about the courting gifts just then.

“No one is expecting that of you today. Dwarves receive gifts on their birthdays, not the other way round.”

“I know that.” Bilbo waved his hand. “Never mind. I guess I’m just home sick. There would be a feast, and lights all over the Party tree, and all my vexing relatives pretending to be nice for once...”

“Whereas the vexing Dwarves here cannot be bothered to even pretend, am I right?”

“When you put it like that,” Bilbo smiled without mirth and left the rest of the words unsaid. He ran his little ivory comb through his curls one last time and squinted at his reflection in the mirror.

“I’m afraid this will have to do,” he concluded and put the comb back on the dressing table in the corner of his chamber. “If not, I’ll just tell them to pitch a strand of horsehair to my head and braid that.”

“Your Myrtle has a tail that matches your colouring quite nicely,” Gandalf mused, and this time, a smile broke over the Hobbit’s face. It was a mere ghost of his usual wide grin, but a smile it was.

 

 

*

 

 

“It is the perfect gift, and you know it,” Dís reminded her brother and emphasised it by giving the lace on his leather vambrace a particularly sharp tug. Thorin stared ahead, the resolution not to wince written all over in the stiff way he held himself. If there was a reason for Thorin to hate the ceremonial garb, it was the way Frérin and Dís relished ‘helping’ him into it, and Dís knew it very well.

“It is also high time the lad got some official recognition,” Frérin added from behind Thorin’s back, where he worked on straightening the twin clasps on the shoulders of the heavy fur-lined cloak.

“Honestly, brother: the Dwarf-friend bead is the least you can give him. He deserves a bead of intent for all his trouble, he does.”

“He is not my intended,” Thorin said tonelessly. Frérin exchanged a quick glance with Dís behind his brother’s back.

“And whose fault is that?” Dís quipped. “If you two fools just talked to each other–”

“We did,” Thorin interrupted her. “Believe me, sister, that both of us got to say everything there was to say.”

“Why do I think that this translates to you sitting in a corner, surrounded by your impenetrable silence, and trying to drill holes in Bilbo’s head with the sheer force of your royal stare?”

“Shut it, Frérin,” Dís said. “If Thorin says they talked, then talk they did.”

She finished her work and walked around Thorin in an appreciative circle.

“You look magnificent, brother,” she smiled. “If Bilbo doesn’t get down on his knees and beg for your hand when he sees you then he doesn’t know what’s good for him.”

When the door hinges stopped ringing with the force with which Thorin had slammed the door behind him, Frérin put down his hands from his ears and looked at his sister with a completely befuddled expression.

“No, brother,” Dís sighed, “I have no idea what was so terrible about what I just said, either.”

 

 

*

 

 

“This is impossible,” Thorin declared through gritted teeth. His fingers, clutching feebly at the too short strands that kept slipping out and spring back into their natural curly state at every opportunity, brushed across a tip of a pointed ear. It twitched under that fleeting contact and Bilbo Baggins shifted in his seat. The half-finished braid slipped from Thorin’s fingers and immediately became undone, for what must have been a fourth time since this damned ceremony started.

All around the Council Room, his grandfather, his father, that blasted Wizard, the heads of the noble families and every last one of the old fusty Dwarrows of the King’s Council watched as he kept trying and failing to give the Halfling the bead of a Dwarf-friend.

“Can you not hold still?” Thorin admonished him under his breath.

“Can you not touch my ears?” Bilbo countered just as testily.

“Are you a child that cannot bear a tickle?”

Thorin could hear the Halfling’s teeth grinding together as he dug his fingers into his unruly hair and started anew.

“Hobbit’s ears are sensitive,” Bilbo muttered under his breath. “Very sensitive. You don’t touch them if you have no intention of carrying things any further, and definitely not in public.”

Thorin immediately lifted his hands higher to stay safe from even accidentally touching those strange, Elven-looking ears. Bilbo’s going for Dwalin’s ear in a fight now actually made sense, when Thorin recalled what he’d witnessed from the exercise. The same move must have inflicted excruciating pain when executed on a Hobbit.

“How was I to know that?” he hissed.

Bilbo shifted again, just enough to spare him a condescending glance out of the corner of his eyes. “I suppose you wouldn’t,” he whispered meaningfully.

Thorin averted his eyes first, unable to form words in his defence. His position was not defendable anyway. In the bathhouses, he took his pleasure and didn’t offer to return it, didn’t even touch the Halfling in any other way than to manhandle him roughly and then shove him away. Another thing that his suitor could now hold over Thorin, another tally in the ever-growing account of debts that Thorin now owed him.

“Think of it as practice,” Bilbo said lightly but this time loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’ve been told that after I complete this courtship, I get to ask for a braid of engagement.”

Thorin abruptly let go of the hair as if it burned him. Here was the Halfling, talking about engagement as if it was a given, a thing already settled, while his grandfather spared no word to contradict him, and his father looked on with a proud – proud! – smile.

There must be a way out.

“Do not assess your diamonds before they are cut,” he said, trying with all his might to keep his voice even. He backed a step away from the Halfling, the miserable braid all but forgotten.

Whispers rippled through the Council Room. One by one, the full attention of everyone present riveted upon them. Uneasiness and fright crawled up Thorin’s spine, but words, once broached, could no longer be held inside.

Bilbo hopped down from his raised chair and shook his head to loosen his curls again. From the determined set of his mouth, it seemed that he, too, arrived at a decision.

“Why do you fear me so much, Thorin?”

“Bilbo–” the Wizard tried to cut in but no one heeded him.

“I do not fear you,” Thorin thundered. “I despise you. As if I would ever put a Dwarven braid in your hair, you wretch!”

Bilbo stepped up to him and lifted himself onto his toes to speak directly into Thorin’s face: “You were only too ready to put your Dwar–”

The horror in Thorin’s eyes probably reminded Bilbo of their audience, so he left that accusation unfinished. But it served its purpose, reminding Thorin of his own wretchedness. Having it shoved into his face like that was more than Thorin could bear at this moment.

“You,” he began, voice deep and rolling with threat, “you hold no claim over me, you Shire rat!”

The collective gasp that ran through the room rounded on them like the surf breaking upon the cliff, washing over Bilbo and leaving him tight lipped and pale as a moonstone. The Halfling stood there unmoving and rooted to the spot for a moment, then he nodded jerkily, more to himself than to anyone else, and ran out of the room before anyone could stop him.

 

*

 

“Bilbo!”

Balin looked up from the open wardrobe in Bilbo’s room where he was sorting through the clothes, picking ones he deemed appropriate enough for the occasion and discarding the others.

“You’re back early! There’s to be a great feast down in the Halls of–” Balin stopped when he took in the sight of the Hobbit in front of him.  

“Bilbo, where’s your new braid?”

Bilbo took the armful of clothing away from Balin, threw it on the bed, pulled his travel pack from under it, and started to stuff it with his things, not even pausing to fold them.

“My hair is not long enough,” he clipped out. His hands shook so badly that he nearly broke his pipe in two. “My name is too strange, my ears are too strange, my height is not enough, my status is not good enough; I am not good enough!” He punctuated each statement with a rise of his voice until he but yelled the last one.

The door opened and Bilbo spun around, relief mixed with disappointment flitting over his face when he realised that it was Lord Fundin on the doorstep.

“What is this, Master Baggins? You should not heed the rumours–”

“It’s hardly rumours, my Lord, when you hear it directly in the Council Room!” Bilbo snapped.

Fundin’s face fell. “What happened?”

“I’m done, that’s what happened!” Bilbo collected his writing equipment and his journal from the desk by the window and threw it all into the pack. “I’m done trying to be enough of a Dwarf. I’m done trying to make his royal Highness want me. I don’t want him! I came here for one Thorin Oakenshield, and I’m probably way ahead of time, but I can’t be expected to be hanging about, putting up with insults spewed into my face and waiting for Thorin to pull his clotted head out of his lovely behind!”

“Thorin?” Fundin asked at the same moment that Balin said, more than little alarmed: “Lovely behind?”

“I swear,” Bilbo raged on, “that if Thorin ever decides that he wants me, he must come to me.”

“Bilbo,” Balin put in, with an air of an uncharacteristic apprehension, “don’t swear such things–”

“Yes, I swear, he has to come to me and court me like a Hobbit,” Bilbo carried on, oblivious to the anxiousness of both Dwarves. “Without his grandeur, without his gold, without his ridiculous braids, just a simple Thorin Oakenshield–”

“Do you mean it?” asked a grave voice in the doorway.

Prince Thorin stepped into the room, his eyes unreadable, his expression dark like thunderclouds on the horizon, heavy with the promise of storm but uncertain of when and where it would be unleashed. Balin’s gaze fixed immediately on his beard and the young Dwarf blanched, burying his face in his hands. The heavy ornamental clasp that used to hold together Thorin’s beard was gone, the braid itself was a good two inches shorter and its end hastily redone and held together only with a piece of leather tie.

“Do you swear it?” the Prince asked again. “I’ve been sent here to beg your forgiveness and bring you back to the ceremony, but it seems that it is no longer necessary. Do you mean what you’ve just said?”

Bilbo realised that perhaps his mouth had run away with him. He’d said, ‘I swear’ as a turn of speech, but the reaction of both Balin and Fundin should have warned him that the Dwarrows weren’t ones to use such words in vain. If he could take it back – but no. Thorin detested him without reason already; Bilbo didn’t want to give him a true cause to do so. Never let it be it said that the Hobbits had the habit of going back on their words.

“I do,” he replied, chin up and toes digging into the stone floor so hard it hurt.

Thorin nodded to himself. “Your oath has been heard,” he declared. Behind him, Lord Fundin muttered something in Khuzdul that sounded very much like a swear word.

“This courtship is over,” Thorin said brusquely. “You will depart tomorrow.”

 

*

 

Bilbo stood on the last landing of the great staircase leading to the courtyard at the Gates, his light grey travelling cloak thrown over his shoulders, Gandalf’s towering figure like a steadying anchor at his side. He bowed to the group of Dwarves before him and hoped that his smile was not too watery.

Fundin’s sons accompanied their father to bid Bilbo their last farewell. Young Ori had ventured from the sanctuary of the Library, his brother Nori appeared out of nowhere with the miner Bofur in tow, and even Bombur came with Beinta, Bombur openly sniffing and Beinta trying to stuff Bilbo’s pockets with sweets. A little apart from the group of his friends, the royal family waited in silence, incomplete and sombre.

“I will miss you, Bilbo,” Dís hugged him, drying off the few stray tears on Bilbo’s face in her beautiful soft beard. “And I’m sure he will too, as soon as he realises what he’s done.”

Frérin clapped him on the shoulder. “Until our next meeting, Master Hobbit.”

Bilbo smiled sadly. “I don’t think there will be any, my Prince. I might have set the conditions of Thorin’s atonement a bit too hard.”

Thráin stepped forth, holding out an open hand. On his palm lay a small silver bead, lined with ornaments of stylised Durin’s sigil and a circular inscription in Cirth.

“The bead of a Dwarf-friend,” he said. “It’s rightfully yours, even though my son was too clumsy to braid it in. I hope that one day I will see you again with this bead in its place.”

Bilbo accepted the bead with another deep bow. “It wasn’t really Thorin’s fault that the bead wouldn’t fit,” he admitted.

“My son had no right to disrespect his soulmate – to disrespect you,” Thráin stated firmly. “I carried out his punishment with my own hand. Maybe by the time his beard grows back, your hair will be long enough for braiding as well.”

Thráin put both his hands on Bilbo’s shoulders and levelled him with that patient but piercing gaze, reminding Bilbo of his father so much that he ached.

“I must admit that when you first arrived, I only vouched for you for the sake of our sacred tradition. But since then I came to know you, Master Baggins, and now I would vouch for you gladly again for your character. Your leaving is not a sign of good fortune for this Kingdom, I’m afraid,” the elder Prince sighed.

“I have to concur with you on that,” Gandalf nodded. He kept his voice low and laced with warning. “Something festers in the heart of Erebor. The Mountain is sick, and where sickness thrives, bad things follow.”

“My position does not come with the power to change things,” Thráin said and shook his head, his greying brow furrowed in grim thoughts. “My friendship goes with you, Tharkûn. May we meet again at a more auspicious time.”

 

*

 

So Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey left the Lonely Mountain on the twenty third of Harvestmath, heading back to the land of the Melekhân, and the Durinfolk whispered of a bad omen, of the wrath of Mahal that was sure to descend upon them for the transgression of their Prince. Never had it been heard of driving away one’s soulmate, not in any of the seven Kingdoms of old.

Word got out about the Halfling's oath and many have wondered if Mahal had heard it as well and would turn it into a curse. A new song spread along with the whispers, on the lips of blind beggars at the Gates and bards in the back rooms of taverns. 

 

_O son of Durin guard your adamant heart_

_a storm is coming to tear our gates apart_

_it's the end of the Mountain, of the glory we know_

_days of fortune have passed and the darkness will grow_

 

 

Perhaps they were right, because when the days began to shorten again the next year, a Dragon came to Erebor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bard song is borrowed and adapted from Skyrim. Yeah, Dragons and Dragonfighters.


	8. Time of Exile

 

The Dragon’s jaws and claws had left deep gashes in the gates and walls of Erebor but deeper still were the wounds his attack left in the minds and hearts of those who escaped him without any visible scar on the outside.

So many had died in the vain attempt to protect the Mountain, the finest warriors no more than crumbs under Smaug’s feet. So many had remained trapped in the caverns from where the Dragon fire sucked away all air, the only mercy in their cruel end was that they suffocated before they burned, their escape blocked by debris flying and falling in the midst of Smaug’s wreckage. Too many now walked in the procession of the survivors, boots dragging through the mud and ash, unseeing eyes still filled with images of flames, ears still ringing with the cries of their kin.

Songs of mourning followed the procession like a drove of carrion birds, rising above the rows of refugees along with the smoke curling around their feet when they treaded the burned earth, one step after another, without pause, without thought, without question. It was too late for them.

 

 

_The sun bleeds in the morning_

_Late had come the warning_

_No time left for mourning_

_Those who had died_

_The sky at dawn is burning_

_We are not returning_

_Fallen, we are learning_

_The cost of Dwarven pride_

_For what was all that hoarding_

_And all that watchful guarding_

_There’ll be no rewarding_

_Of those who had died_

 

  

But perhaps the biggest gash Smaug left in them was the rift that ran deep and merciless through the middle of the royal family. With the old King Thrór half-mad over the loss of the Arkenstone and his son Thráin overlooked in Court for so long that he held no influence whatsoever, Durin’s folk was scattered and leaderless. 

Unless... 

“He said that he would negotiate with you.” 

Thorin looked up from where he was sitting on a rotten log and trying to re-bandage the burn on the back of his forearm. It looked like it could heal in less than a week if he could keep it clear of infection. Not everyone was so lucky. 

Lord Fundin stood patiently a little distance from the Prince and repeated: “The Elvenking says that he is willing to negotiate with you, Thorin.”

Thorin dropped his eyes back to his work on the makeshift bandage. “Are you sure? Did he not mean...?” 

He didn’t say, ‘Thráin, my father.’ He doubted his lips remembered how to shape that sound anymore; he hadn’t uttered those words ever since Thráin humiliated him by cutting off his beard in front of the King and all the nobles. 

Thorin had known the punishment was coming as soon as he’d uttered the words that had brought it upon him. He’d seen the unshed tears in his father’s eyes above the glinting blade of the ceremonial dagger, and he’d known that during the execution of harsh justice, his father had felt the same anguish as Thorin did. But then he’d been sent to beg, to bring Bilbo Baggins back and ask for his forgiveness – only to hear the Halfling taking an oath so grave that it seemed impossible to fulfil. Any regret for his foul words that Thorin might have harboured had been rendered futile; the last door to redemption had been closed in his face. Bilbo had already decided to leave. 

It should have felt like liberation: his unwanted suitor gone, his life free once more to dedicate solely to Erebor’s cause, his public image unburdened by the misshapen match. Thorin should have been rejoicing - but instead, the only lingering feeling was a bitter taste of doubt. Had he made a mistake? There wasn’t anything besides resentment that he harboured for the Halfling, or was there? He would have liked to think that the charm Bilbo held for him was nothing but a fleeting infatuation with everything that was unusual about him, the attraction between them a mere call to his animalistic needs. He wanted to believe that in cutting Bilbo out of his life he’d purged himself from the temptation, that he would be independent again, strong, gloriously alone. But as the days wore on, he began to realise that a part of him had left the Mountain together with Bilbo and that it was something important - something vital.

So he’d done the only thing left to him. He’d gathered the shards of his wounded heart, raw and tender like young crayfish, and like a crayfish he’d hidden them inside a shell. It was a shell of pride, a wall as hard as it was thin, refulgent cover that shone with perfection on the outside, and only he knew how brittle it was from the inside. 

And like a crayfish, Thorin clung to the shell for dear life. Not even his father was allowed in. 

“He did not mean Prince Thráin,” Fundin finished the thought for him. “You are the only one he will speak to.” 

Images from that fateful day flashed unbidden in front of Thorin’s eyes, one clearer than any other: the King of the Woodland Realm, their supposed ally, their resentful neighbour – looking on their doom from his high steed and not moving a finger to help them. Thorin’s nostrils filled with the memory of dragon stench, of leather and furs and burning flesh, the smell of immobilizing fear – and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. 

“What words do you think I could have for the oathbreaker?” 

“Think of what is at stake,” Lord Fundin said, his usually stern voice laden with urgency and something more like... pleading? 

Thorin swallowed in surprise. His old tutor was pleading with him. The stern Dwarf who had always protected, guided, lectured and scolded him was now asking, not ordering – and waiting for Thorin’s decision. 

Thorin looked briefly over his shoulder.  All around them, as far as his eyes could reach, their people littered the valley like pebbles on the shore, without organisation, without prospects, without hope. Some were resting, some were tending to their wounded family members, but Thorin noticed that too few of them were preparing breakfast, despite the early morning hour. They had fled the Mountain with little more than their bare lives. The shadow of the Lonely Mountain, now the Dragon’s lair, hung ominously over their camp, but Thorin saw another shadow in the empty eyes of the Dwarrows around him: the threat of hunger. 

Dale was nothing but a pile of charred ruins and Esgaroth, already crammed with Dale survivors, had refused any help to the Dwarves.  The Men feared Smaug’s retribution and they also blamed the Dwarves for luring the Dragon into the land. The route eastwards was closed to them because Thrór, clinging to the last vestiges of his pride, decided that they would not seek aid in the lesser domains of their great-uncle Grór. Thorin suspected that Thrór had never forgiven his brother for taking more of their people to live in the Iron Hills when Durin's folk were driven out of the Grey Mountains, despite Thrór coming into the title. Thrór’s ability to hold a grudge was maddening but there were none daring to doubt the king’s decision. As a result, they were bound westwards, and between them and their goal stood the Forest of Mirkwood. 

There was a way going round, north of the accursed Forest. It would take them along the foothills of the Grey Mountains, a dangerous land, swarming with orcs and drenched in ancient dark magic. Cold drakes still slept under some of its peaks. Merchant caravans ventured there sometimes, accompanied by large and heavily armed contingents, but Thorin could not see how an entire small nation would make it through there safely. There were vulnerable children, the old and the wounded who would slow them down, and too few warriors to protect such a vast number of civilians. 

They could go south and round the oldest and most haunted part of Mirkwood but that would take them into the Brown Lands, a forsaken and barren land with no settlements and very little wildlife. With no places to buy food along the road and nothing to hunt for, they would soon starve. 

All that left them with only one option, the Old Forest Road, cutting straight through the enchanted woods – which was currently guarded by a small host of Elves, and as Thorin suspected, many more Elven arrows were pointed at them from among the trees where no one could see the archers move. 

Thranduil had denied them passage and demanded words with Thorin. Well, Thorin decided, words they shall have. 

“Tell Frérin he is to go with me,” he ordered. “My brother has always been a foolish admirer of Elves. Let him see what the two-faced scum are truly like.”

 

*

 

Elven guards lowered their long bows for them as they entered the camp. Thorin watched the eagerness in his younger brother’s gaze as he, ever the ardent apprentice armourer, tried to examine the details of the guards’ scale armour, shaped like overlaying tree leaves, as they passed them. He didn’t have the heart to scold him for dallying, though. Amongst the grief and desperation of their people, Frérin’s indomitable spark of curiosity was like a star in a dark night sky: a hope that some still stood unbroken, that not everything was lost. 

The Elvenking waited for them under the canopy of a particularly large beech on the edge of the Forest, surrounded by a circle of guards that parted before the two young Princes. The air here was cold, unkissed yet by the first shafts of dawn, and at this close proximity to the enchanted woods Thorin could feel the treacherous spells permeating their surroundings like a chill crawling up his spine. The burn on his forearm itched and he found it harder to breathe. 

Thranduil had chosen this spot for negotiation on purpose, Thorin realised. _Feel this now and be aware that it would be thousand times worse in the shadows among the trees; you cannot sneak through my lands without my permission;_ that was the King’s clear message. 

“Welcome, my Princes.” The strange quality of the air robbed Thranduil’s voice of some of its usual winsome melodiousness but wasn’t enough to cover the undercurrent of mockery. “It is indeed pleasant to finally deal with someone willing to see reason.” 

Thorin found he could not even look at that hateful face, not without being in danger of throttling the King on the spot or dying in the attempt. He kept his eyes fixed on the edges of Thranduil’s cloak when he asked: 

“And what reason do you have to deny us passage?” 

“You are about to bring danger into my land,” was the aloof reply. “The Dragon’s wrath might be following you. I do not want to see the dragon fire ravaging my Forest.” 

“Smaug won’t be following us!” Frérin exclaimed. “That beast is content enough rolling among the treasures it stole!” 

“You could be right.” The cloak shifted; the Elvenking was pacing back and forth. “But still: the number of your people is much greater than the Old Road was built for. You would need protection from the southern side where evil things are lurking, you would need to hunt for food and that would deplete the life in my Forest, and some of my spells would need to be lifted or adjusted. It is only reasonable that I would demand payment for this service.” 

“Payment?!” Thorin spat the word in disbelief. “We are desolate, and instead of helping, you would take more from us?” 

“Oh no. You can keep the little coin you saved.” The unveiled amusement in Thranduil’s voice gave way to the cunning care with which he chose his next words. “But there is a thing in your possession that I desire.” 

Thorin felt his brother next to him taking a sharp breath, thrusting his arm in the direction of the Mountain in a wild gesture. “If this is about those cursed starlight gems of yours, you are welcome to enter the Mountain and claim them yourself from under Smaug’s claws!” 

Thorin could not help a small smirk. His little brother was indeed a Dwarf to be proud of. 

Thranduil did not move at that outburst. His voice was singsong with feigned surprise. “The White gems of Lasgalen? No, I didn’t mean those. Why should I want to be rewarded with something that is rightfully mine?” he sneered. “I meant your sword, Prince Thorin.” 

Thorin forgot his resolution not to look up. The Elvenking’s smile was as cold as the air around them but that wasn’t the reason why Thorin’s heart now felt as if a freezing hand grasped and squeezed it tight. He could hear Bilbo’s voice from the first day of that failed courtship a year ago: _King Thranduil of the Woodland realm took a particular liking to the sword and he was very disappointed when he learned that I intended to present it to Thorin, and not to his Majesty himself._ It hadn’t been a ploy to make Thrór interested in the gift, no. It’s been a year, and here the Elvenking was, still as keen to collect what he wanted. Thorin’s fingers sought the hilt of _Orcrist_ of their own volition, just to make sure that it still hung at his belt.

So this was why Thranduil demanded to speak with him and not with his father or his grandfather. Thorin didn't know it was possible to hate the Elf more than he already did. 

“That sword was a gift,” he rasped. 

Thranduil smiled even wider. “I am aware. I remember Master Baggins, from both occasions I had the pleasure of hosting him in my halls. Quite the remarkable little fellow, isn’t he?” 

Thorin felt a smaller hand, a warm and reassuring hand, squeeze his arm from behind. It tore through the blinding urge to attack – to kill that taunting scoundrel with his bare hands – and reminded him of what was at stake. 

King Thranduil leaned close to Thorin, his lean face unblemished with age, eyes shining like a predator’s when they reflect the light of a fire at night, lurking in the shadows at the edge of the camp. 

“Such is the deal I propose: your sword for the protection of your people. It is a small price, don’t you think? After all, why would you insist on keeping a token from someone you deemed unworthy to gift you with it?” 

Thranduil turned and walked a few paces away, settling back under the tree like a lord at his leisure; ostentatiously dismissive of the fury that Thorin was now trembling with. 

“What will you say, Prince?” 

“Ish kakhfê ai’d dur rugnul!!” 

 _Orcrist_ rattled in its golden sheath as it landed before the Elvenking’s feet. Despite the violent curse, Thranduil’s smile was wide and gleaming, all sharp teeth. He picked up the sword and ran a palm along the blade in an appreciative caress. 

“Our deal is made, Prince.” He turned his back on them, the meeting clearly dismissed. But then he paused and inclined his head, saying partly over his shoulder and just loud enough as to be heard: 

“Your people will receive all the food and supplies they will need, and healing balms for their wounds as well. May you not remember my realm as a place of cruelty, Prince Thorin.” 

The King left and the circle of guards closed on the Dwarven brothers, leading them out of the camp without pause, before Thorin could shout something even worse after his enemy. He was painfully aware that this added service was not a part of the original bargain; that it was a charity on the part of the Elvenking. But Thorin said nothing, in the end. He was not his Grandfather; he wouldn’t let his people starve rather than to accept any help he could get. 

Later, as they made their slow progress on the road overshadowed by the unending rustle of leaves, Lord Fundin appeared at Thorin’s side. They walked a good while together, none of them speaking, Thorin’s belt strangely weightless without the assurance of his sword. 

“Frérin told me how we came by that tree-hugger’s help,” Fundin ventured at last. 

“Tell me, friend, what is it that I should remember from today’s lesson?” Thorin asked bitterly, reminiscent of the countless times Fundin tried to impart his wisdom to his young pupil. 

“That the greatest battles aren’t won with a sword,” Fundin replied. “Today, you battled your pride, and a sword, however fine, is a small price for such a victory.” 

The elder Dwarf clasped a hand on Thorin’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. “I am very proud of you. King Thrór has my sworn allegiance but you, Thorin, will be a king I can follow.” 

It was the gloom of the Forest that misted over Thorin’s vision and it was the lingering weight of spells that made his throat feel tight, he told himself, and was glad that Fundin had to go back to look after his sons because the path became suspiciously bumpy under his feet and he didn’t want anyone to see him stagger under the onslaught of emotion. 

“It wasn’t the sword, you know,” a voice sounded from his other side. Thorin quickly rubbed his eyes to clear the sting out of them and looked up to find Frérin walking by, an uncharacteristically sheepish expression on his fair face. 

“The gift, I mean,” he continued. “Hobbits court with flowers, you know–” Thorin didn’t know but it made sense that Frérin would, since he’d spent many a day in Bilbo’s company ever since the Halfling got him drunk under the table, “–and Bilbo was clever. He knew he couldn’t just give you flowers, so he wrapped them around a thing he knew Grandfather wouldn’t refuse... but the true gift of ironwork, one he crafted with his own hands, was this.” 

Frérin was handing him a carefully rolled piece of flower-patterned iron filigree. 

If Thorin’s throat felt tight before, he wasn’t sure how it was possible that he could talk now. 

“You carried it out of the Mountain?” 

Frérin shrugged, still looking a bit guilty. “It was the only keepsake I had of Bilbo. And I knew the day would come when you would ask for it.” 

Thorin touched the delicate flowers, the wire painstakingly woven together to create amazing detail. The cracked shell of his pride never seemed thinner, and the still tender flesh under it quivered, like a crayfish trying to hide from too fresh air and too bright a sun. 

“I didn’t ask for it,” he said and immediately despaired. Why could he never say what he wanted to say? Why did all the words emerging from his mouth sound so haughty and gruff? But he needn’t have worried. His little brother knew him through and through. 

“Oh brother, you didn’t have to.” Frérin pressed the filigree into Thorin’s hand and enveloped him in a bone-crushing hug.

 

*

 

They couldn’t brave the high passes over the Misty Mountains, not with winter breathing coldly down their necks and too few healthy and strong arms to ward off the hordes of orcs and goblins that dwelled there. Instead they turned south, following the gently rolling vales of the river Anduin. The weather was milder here, sheltered between the mountain range and the great forest, and despite the late season, the sun shone warm on the still blossoming meadows. The game was plentiful here and wilding apple trees grew on southern slopes. The land itself felt kind and welcoming – almost like a garden; and Thorin often found himself pondering his soulmate and the little knowledge he had about the Halfling’s homeland. 

“Master Baggins would like it here,” he remarked one evening, bent over the bowl of fish stew that Dís brought him. “This land – so green and fertile. I wonder no Halflings dwell here.” 

“They did, once.” Dís sat down next to him with her bowl. “We’re not far from the Gladden Fields, and that’s where some of the Hobbit ancestors lived, nearly two thousand years ago. Then darkness spread over the land and the little folk were forced to abandon their home. They crossed the Misty Mountains and settled in the Shire. They call it the Wandering Days...” Dís trailed off when she caught sight of Thorin’s face and frowned. 

“Have you seen a ghost or what?” 

Thorin shook his head to gather himself. “How do you know these things?” 

It was Dís’ turn to stare. “Bilbo told me all that, of course.” Then understanding dawned in her eyes, and she thumped his arm so hard that he nearly spilled his stew. “You never really talked to each other, did you? I had thought...” 

“You need not remind me how poorly I treated my soulmate,” Thorin huffed, bowing his head to hide the colour of shame on his face. He couldn’t be more wrong in his assumptions concerning the Halfling. He had thought him soft and weak, and yet Bilbo was a descendant of people that had lived through the same ordeal that the Dwarves suffered now, exiled from their home, braving the long trek over the mountains with nothing but a feeble hope that the land beyond would be welcoming of them. Thorin had thought his suitor ignorant, and yet Bilbo had seen more of the wide world than Thorin had. Bilbo had endured the frost of Misty Mountains and the gloom of Mirkwood on his journey while Thorin had spent all his life sitting around Erebor. 

“Tell me more,” Thorin said after a long while, still unable to meet Dís’s patient and knowing gaze. “Tell me more about the Halflings.” 

Tell me more about Bilbo, he wanted to say, but in the end, he didn’t need to. Dís threw her arm around his shoulders and with a happy grin she proceeded to tell him every story she remembered about Bilbo’s home, kin and life, until the stars shone brightly above them like the flickers of hope the Dwarves had for the future.

 

*

 

They passed through the Gap of Rohan in the middle of winter. The climate was milder here than it used to be around the Lonely Mountain but still the winds blew harshly on the open plains of the Riddermark, cutting through their clothing and biting into their bones. The Men there held no particular love for Dwarves but they could appreciate a good sword and a good horseshoe, so at least the Dwarves could earn enough to keep them fed. 

Then they turned north, following the North-South Road, crossed the River Greyflood into Eriador and slowly, painstakingly made their way towards the Blue Mountains. Dwarves once lived there, as in every mountains, and the land around wasn't claimed by either Men or Elves. The road took them close to the Shire but Thorin studiously shied away from every thought of going there on his own and seeking out his soulmate. What did he have to offer him – shamed and pitiful as he was now? 

He could also see, from the few encounters with Hobbits they had when the families needed to be fed and the Dwarves had no choice than to make the rounds of the villages and beg for any work they could be given, that not every Hobbit was as curious and open-minded as Bilbo Baggins had been. Most of them would close their doors in their faces, eyeing them distrustfully from behind the curtains, leaving a few loaves of bread and some cheese on the doorstep as a charity, but resolutely refusing to have any dealings with the strange, dirty, wild-looking folk. 

Thorin could not help but think of Bilbo’s second courting gift. How useful it would be now if he had the power, gold, and the backing of a respected Hobbit family to negotiate a proper trading agreement instead of begging for crumbs and selling their blacksmithing work underpriced for food! But Thorin had dismissed the gift at the time, so sure that the rock of Erebor would never shatter under their feet - and now it was too late for could-have-been's. 

When they finally reached Ered Luin they found the ruins of Belegost, an ancient settlement abandoned at the end of the First Age, that provided them with a temporary shelter during another winter before they could start exploring the mines. But come spring they were disappointed to find that the once rich gold mines had been long exhausted. There was gold, but only in the form of gold-bearing river sand, and the Dwarves had to work hard for every nugget of the precious metal.  Miners used to descending into deep shafts, digging into rich veins and unearthing priceless gems, were reduced to panning and washing river sand for little flecks of gold, a work that cost them much time and strength and yielded little. In the end, many miners became tinkers and toymakers, warriors became blacksmiths – but they lived.

 

*

 

It was the third year into their exile when Dís came before Thorin hand in hand with a young Dwarf named Víli, son of Gísli, of the Firebeards clan, a blacksmith she’d met on one of her travels to Bree, and announced her wish to wed him. 

“Grandfather cares more for his mourning of glory lost than for his own family, and Father says I am to do as I please,” she said. “Just so you know, brother, I am going to marry Víli no matter what you have to say on the matter but I would still like to have your blessing, for family’s sake.” 

Thorin stared. “You’re not even fifty.” 

“I’m fifty next year!” she retorted. “And I don’t care about the proper age for marriage. My body has been ready to bear children for the past fifteen years, thank you very much. Our people are weakened, our younglings are few, more have died than were born during last winter, and I am not going to wait for happier times because happier times may never come.” 

“But he is a mere blacksmith – and you are a Princess!” Thorin argued. 

“May I remind you, that you are a mere blacksmith now, Thorin?” Dís spat. “And Princess to what throne am I, may I ask? Is this your pride rearing its ugly head once again? Víli is the love of my life and I am not as stupid as you, brother, to ruin my only chance for happiness!” 

She clamped her hand over her mouth as soon as the words were out and blanched when she saw the fleeting look of pained misery on her brother’s face, immediately hidden behind a stern scowl – a poor mask that she’d been able to look through every time.    

“I am sorry,” she said miserably. “That was uncalled for.” 

Thorin said nothing for a while, and took his time circling the tall, fair-haired Dwarf who returned his intimidating glare with a patient, openly good-natured, but obviously just as strong-willed expression. Well, Thorin surmised, the Dwarf had to have a good bit of spine if he was to marry Dís. 

“We are diminished, but that shouldn’t mean our customs are to be forsaken entirely,” Thorin said at last. “You are to bring me a sword, a good Dwarven sword, to show your qualities. If I approve, you’re free to marry my sister.” 

Víli’s eyes flashed. “I will make you a sword worthy of a king,” he promised. 

Dís threw herself around Thorin’s neck and knocked their foreheads so hard that bright spots danced a second in front of Thorin’s eyes. “I knew it! Víli will not disappoint you.”

In two weeks time Víli came again and presented Thorin with a long broadsword with a wide blade that tapered into a sleek point, capable of punching through armour, and sharpened along both edges, ideal for slashing attacks. The thick, heavy blade was especially lethal in close combat and fitted Thorin’s fighting style perfectly. 

Thorin named the sword _Deathless_ , and Dís, daughter of Thráin, and Víli, son of Gísli, were wed on Midyear’s Day in Ered Luin. There wasn’t a happier Dwarrowdam for leagues around, which was only too understandable when only a month after her wedding, the thin summer clothes could no longer conceal the fact that she was with child. 

In the ensuing brawl, Thorin and Frérin broke Víli’s nose, Víli dislocated Thorin’s shoulder, and Frérin wore his black eye into the next week, and Dís didn’t talk to either one of them for a fortnight. When the babe with fair locks and fluffy wisps on his cheeks was born, strong and healthy, Thorin, Frérin and Víli tackled an entire barrel of ale together and in the morning the Durin brothers admitted that they could not have asked for a better brother-in-law.  

 

*

 

Luck is a fickle thing, as changeable as the weather, Thorin thought to himself bitterly, as he rushed his pony to the nearest village on the outskirts of the Shire, where he knew a wisewoman lived. Dís’ second pregnancy, so soon – only five years after the first – wore out all of her strength, and the birth of another son, this time a spitting image of his mother, with her black hair and blue eyes, nearly killed her. Now she lay with a childbed fever, Víli was tending to her and trying what he could to stave off the infection, and Thorin only hoped he’d be back in time – and that the herbs he’d bring would be of any use. 

“Childbed fever?” the herb healer, an elder Hobbit matron, living with a young lass acting as both a servant and an apprentice, eyed him up and down. “Here, I would have thought your females were sturdier than that.” 

Thorin dug his fingernails into his palms and then chucked a bag of copper coins onto the small table between them. She lifted it, counted the coin quickly on her palm and clicked her tongue. 

“That’s not enough, lad.” She gave him another calculating look. “There’s much demand for teas against fever at this time of year, and I have to look carefully at how much I give out because the herbs are hard to find, so late past their season, am I right, Violet dear?” 

“They’re very past their season,” Violet quipped obediently. 

“This is everything I have,” Thorin pleaded. 

“You have a nice little silver bead there in your hair,” she pointed rudely with her forefinger somewhere behind his shoulder. Dumbfounded, Thorin followed the direction of her gaze with his fingers until his fingertips brushed over the Durin bead at the end of his left braid. 

“This bead is made of mithril,” he choked out, still too shocked to comprehend what was going on. The price of the bead was probably greater than the wisewoman’s home and half of her village on top, those two beads were passed from father to son in their line ever since Durin’s folk were driven out of Moria, and she was asking that for a handful of herbs? 

“Mees-ril?” She shook her head. “Never heard of that. Have you, Violet dear?” 

“Never, ma’am,” her faithful echo replied. 

“Mithril,” Thorin repeated, panicking now. Dís was dying, a day ride away from here, and he didn’t have the time for educating villagers on precious metals! “Silver steel.” 

“Oooh,” the Hobbitess drawled, “so it’s only silver on top, and steel on the inside? Well I guess it’s true what they say about cheap Dwarven imitations. In that case, I’ll take both of them.” She gestured between Thorin’s left and right braid. “They’ll make a nice pair of earrings for me, at least.” 

Thorin bit his lip so hard it bled. “Madam, pray be reasonable–” 

“Look, Master Dwarf, either you want the herbs or you don’t,” the herb healer shrugged. “But I'd like to see you find another healer willing to sell medicine to a Dwarf this side of Bree. We have just barely enough for our people.” 

Dís, dead and gone. Little Fíli, a Dwarfling of five, crying on the grave of his mother. The babe, Kíli, never knowing her smile. In the end, the decision was hardly a difficult one. Thorin pulled both beads off the ends of his braids and laid them carefully onto the table. 

He returned to Ered Luin with his hair pulled up into a ponytail and tied with a similar plain leather tie that held the still short braid on his beard. Dís’ fever broke, they drained and bathed her wound in herbal infusions, and in less than a month, she was able to walk again. 

A year later Thorin was able to save enough from his blacksmithing commissions to buy back his beads. He figured that their weight in pure silver coin should be enough for the wisewoman, and though he wasn’t a jeweller, he was willing to make her a pair of silver earrings in exchange. But when he showed up in her shop, she only threw her hands up. 

“I’m so sorry, lad, I don’t have them any more!” she exclaimed. “Violet, move your lazy behind and bring us tea,” she barked at her apprentice and turned back to Thorin. 

“I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you the first time round,” she prattled on. “You see, the reputation you Dwarves have around here... no offence, though! But as I was saying, I don’t have your mees-ril beads any more. A Ranger woman dropped by about six months ago and bought them from me. Fine satchel of gold she gave me for them, too!” 

“They were worth far more than that,” Thorin growled. 

“Oh, so she said! But you see, gold is all right, and fancy things you can buy with it, but we are simple Hobbits. Me and Violet are well off as it is, and I for one never had much fondness for all that mathom circulating around...” 

Thorin had no idea what this mathom the healer was talking about was, but it was of no consequence now. 

“A Ranger woman?” 

“Yes,” the Hobbitess nodded vigorously. “A strange folk, they live in the wilderness. Big folk. There are rumours that they have dealings with Elves,” she said, her eyes bulging out, probably picturing in her mind the fabled Elven healers. “Anyway, she told me that I had all but robbed you last year, and that won’t do, no no, that won’t do.” 

Violet brought the tea tray, but the wisewoman was once again fluttering around the shop gathering various things. 

“I’m a respectable Hobbit healer,” she said decisively, “and I won’t have anyone thinking me a robber, not even Dwarves. I saved most of that silly gold – be a good lad and take it, and you can come to me for medicine any time, for free, you and your family.” 

So Thorin got a half-full satchel of gold pieces, a beggar’s price for a family heirloom of immeasurable worth, and as he camped for the night on his road home, his dreams were haunted by a little indignant voice of his memory: 

_He has to come to me, without his grandeur, without his gold, without his ridiculous braids, just a simple Thorin Oakenshield..._

Where was his grand Kingdom with all its daily luxuries? All he had now was the toil of hard work, scorn and ridicule from Men and sanctimonious charity from Hobbits. Where was all the gold of Erebor’s treasury? A bed for a Dragon now, nothing more. And now he’d even lost his mithril beads and with them any recognition he had as a Dwarf of Durin’s bloodline. With them, one look from any Dwarf, of no matter how distant a land, would be enough, and Thorin would be paid the reverence he was due; without them, he was nobody. 

Thorin wondered what Bilbo would say to him if he were to come after him. Would he be horrified? Or would he pity the Prince? Thorin didn’t know which option was worse. 

But still he wasn’t Oakenshield.

 

*

 

He became that one year later, as he lay on the blood-slick rocky ground of Dimrill Dale, fingers grasping in vain after his lost shield, and the mace of a giant orc chieftain swinging above his head. With nothing but a wooden branch of an oak tree and the strength of his arm to ward off the strokes of his enemy, he finally got hold of _Deathless_ and slashed it above himself blindly, in a last effort, on the brink of certain death. 

The orcs and goblins dragged Azog back into the pit whence he came, to bleed out and die of his wounds, and Thorin led the last charge that turned the tide of battle to their advantage. 

The victory in the battle of Azanulbizar was theirs, but what a bitter victory it was.  

 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. An Unexpected Burglar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Mildred Bobbin for helping me to wrench the most out of this angst and to Ariane DeVere for her unparalleled tenses-wrestling and comma-catching skills.

 

Dís had visited the tombs every day ever since the funeral rites ended. She would stand there, hold a silent, tearless vigil for a couple of minutes, and then she would leave again.

It took two months for her to finally break down and cry, hot, hopeless tears falling down on the block of granite that covered her husband’s body. Thorin held her shaking shoulders, his beard shorn in mourning, and wished he could cry too, that he could summon the merciful river of tears and let it melt and wash away the frost that surrounded his heart. His very mind was bleak and empty like the days following the fateful battle, day after day like soldiers marching home, purposeless and numb.

He couldn’t even look upon the rows of tombs in those first days. So many he didn’t even know by name – just the sheer number of lives lost was enough to make him despair. But worse than that was the sight of gravestones bearing the names he did know. There lay Fundin, son of Farin, his teacher, his faithful supporter among the nobles, his friend. Next to him, Víli, a good Dwarf if Thorin ever met one. Next to him yet, under a fine block of sandstone littered with flecks of gold from the rivers of Ered Luin, the pale golden brown reminding them of the shining colour of his hair, lay his little brother: Frérin the Fair, Frérin the Golden.

Worse still was the one empty place among the tombs – a gap filled with uncertainty and the tormenting suspense of waiting, just like the gap hollowed in Thorin’s heart. No one had found the body of Thráin, his father; no one bore news of his fate. No one could give them one more day, just one day to reconcile.

The only tomb Thorin didn’t wish to look upon and vowed he never would, even if he had the strength of heart to do so, was the imposing weight of white marble presiding over them all: the tomb of their fallen King Thrór.

The King had never found contentment in their new abode, he could never reconcile himself to their lesser but honest life. Many had tried to sway him from that doomed plan to drive away the legions of orcs that infested Moria and reclaim the ancient home of Durin, but Thorin had learned long ago that the pride of Durin’s blood doesn’t bend: it only breaks.

Now they were broken and it was left to Thorin to pick up the pieces. The future was blurred and the past hurt too much to cling to, and Thorin felt unmoored and adrift, unwilling to look too closely into his own core for fear of finding it shattered.  So he had, once again, gathered everything that might weaken him – pain of loss, ache of regret, shine of gentleness, flutter of trust – and hid it deep inside himself, choosing instead to let his deeds define him, and accepting the higher goals of his people for his own. He was acclaimed as a hero, he had defeated the chieftain of their foes; his people looked up to him as to a king. A crownless, homeless king – because the cold, crumbling halls of Belegost could never feel like home – but a leader still. So he braided his hair again with the twin braids of kingship, fastened the ends with a pair of plain silver beads, fitted the oak branch that saved his life with metal spikes to serve as a proper shield and vowed to carry it – and the name Oakenshield – until he was hailed as a king on the throne of Erebor.

 

*

 

That was how Gandalf found him one evening at the Prancing Pony in Bree, his fur cloak still dripping from the rain pouring outside, his plate of food barely touched on the too high table before him, hand closed around the hilt of _Deathless_ and getting ready to bash in the heads of two unsavoury looking Men.

“Mind if I join you?”

The pair of thugs withdrew at the sudden appearance of the Wizard, who took seat at Thorin’s table without actually waiting for his consent. Thorin kept his relief to himself and folded his arms together, regarding the Wizard with an unimpressed frown.

“What a fine chance,” he said, voice laced with irony, feeling the old hackles of distrust rise all over again.

“A wizard never rides on chance,” Gandalf replied good-naturedly. “But what brings Thorin Oakenshield to Bree?”   

The way Gandalf let his voice dip on the battle name told Thorin that Gandalf was likely familiar, not only with Thorin’s current position, but also how he came by it. His scowl deepened. The Wizard could save his smugness and his pity; Thorin had no taste for either.

“I went looking for my father who had been rumoured wandering the wilds near Dúnland,” he answered nonetheless. The Wizard had been a friend of his father, once.

Gandalf had the grace to look discomforted. Such a look was often worn by people about to tell him that his father must be long dead, but Thorin wasn’t ready to give up hope after only a couple of years. Even if he was dead and lost, his father’s memory deserved to be honoured for longer.

“If he were here,” Gandalf said, “I would urge him to march upon Erebor, summon the armies of the seven kingdoms, and take back your homeland. And I say the same to you. Sooner or later darker minds will turn towards Erebor, but now the portents are in your favour. You are the heir to the throne of Durin, you can unite the seven armies to have the might to destroy Smaug.”

“The only thing that will unite the seven armies lies buried beneath the feet of a fire breathing dragon,” Thorin laughed bitterly.

“Yes, it does.” Gandalf’s eyes crinkled at the corners as if Thorin’s argument was the cue he’d been waiting for. “Which is why you would need a burglar. I know of one – excellent burglar material, still quite young, adventurous and more than able to succeed on this quest. A Hobbit, if I may add.”

Thorin’s eyebrows shot up. “Do not let your words praise him too highly,” he huffed. “I am no stranger to the ways of Hobbits, I have observed them for many years.” Thorin remembered well the spurns, curtness and unpleasantness the Hobbits showed them when they, homeless and impoverished, passed by the Shire on their way to Ered Luin. His hand strayed towards the end of his braid where Durin’s bead should have been placed.

“The only Hobbit I’ve ever met with regard for outer world and love for adventure was Bilbo Baggins, and I imagine even he no longer has a care for that.” Thorin took a large swig from his cup and when he put it down, he was surprised to find Gandalf looking almost chastised.

“What happened in Erebor sixteen years ago was partly my fault,” Gandalf admitted. “I had urged Bilbo on the journey as soon as he was of age. I had thought his coming would be a breath of fresh air in the sick decay I perceived in Erebor, I had believed his presence would bring about a change for the better. It is likely you were not meant to meet at that time, and for that I hold myself guilty.”

Thorin shook his head resignedly. “We make our own fortunes. The only fault for what happened between us lies with me. The smallest and my only comfort is that Bilbo was not there when the Dragon came. So many did not escape his fire.”

Gandalf regarded him for a long while without speaking, those piercing eyes glittering with some jest that probably only his own immortal mind found amusing, and then he smiled kindly:

“I think you’ll find that the nature of Hobbits deserves my praise. You can know everything about their ways in three months and then after a century they will yet surprise you. Trust me, Thorin, as your father once did: gather a company of your kin, loyal to you and of a willing heart, and meet me in Hobbiton on the twenty-sixth of Astron next year. It will be a Highday, a most auspicious day to start on the quest, and the weather will not hinder us at that time of year. We shall meet at the burglar’s house – it is very easy to find, follow the main road through Hobbiton and up a hill – and you’ll know the right door by a glowing rune, as it will be marked after the custom of burglars by trade.”

Thorin turned the plan over in his mind. He should say no, he should demand the Wizard disclose his true motives, for there were bound to be other plans within the plan Gandalf proposed to him. And yet, deep in his heart, Thorin already knew that he would agree.

  

*

 

“You seem restless.”

Thorin put down the missive from the Iron Hills he was reading, pinched the bridge of his nose to relieve the ache slowly gathering behind his eyes, and accepted the cup of mulled wine Dís was handing him.

“I would rather be on my way already,” he admitted. “On some days I feel as if I would thaw sooner than the snow in the highlands.”

“I’ll make you mind the boys for one whole day and be sure you’ll be kicked back into solid state at the end of it.” Dís braced her hands at the small of her back and stretched her spine with a loud crack. “Actually, I should do it before you go. Let them enjoy their uncle while they still have him,” she added with unexpected bite.

Thorin sighed. It was an argument rehearsed so many times that the winter seemed to drag ever more endlessly between their squabbles. “I can’t not go, Dís. You know it. There is no choice, not for me.”

“But you do so well by us, here, in Ered Luin,” Dís pleaded.

“And yet, still _‘the silence of night ails me’_ ,” the words of an old poem came unbidden to Thorin.

 

_“Yet there is no cure_

_In chasing a dream, however great_

_Its beauty and allure,”_

 

Dís quoted the rest. “You forget I had to learn this one too, and the point of it seems to rather play in my favour.” 

“Your sons are my heirs, sister. What would you have me bequeath to them? If there is a chance to reclaim our home, I must seize it. For them.” 

“So you would risk robbing them of their only uncle that’s more like a father to them,” Dís accused him. 

Thorin raised an eyebrow. “I do not plan on dying on this quest, sister dear.” 

“See that you stick to your plans, then, for if you die, I shall summon the Necromancer himself and order him to revive you just so I can kill you with my own hands!” 

“How do I know my sister loves me: she threatens me with death,” Thorin grinned and dodged the clap aimed at his ear just in time. 

“I mean it, Thorin!” 

Thorin clasped both her hands in his and pressed the back of her fingers against his cheek. He knew. Dís was earnest in her worry – it wasn’t just a ploy to keep him with her. She meant that she loved him, and Thorin smiled when he recalled the exact wording of her threat. If anyone could order the Necromancer around, it would be Dís. 

“What about Bilbo?” Dís asked after a quiet pause. 

Thorin stiffened. “What of him?” 

This was new. Dís had rarely ever brought up Thorin’s soulmate in conversation, and never while they discussed his imminent departure. Thorin’s breath hitched on a small pang of pain – not strong or sharp enough to really hurt but distracting him nonetheless, more out of surprise that he hadn’t yet disconnected himself from this part of his soul, that it was still there. A pinprick of pain no worse than a weak tug on a scab covering a long-forgotten wound, whose dull ache he’d borne for so long that he couldn’t feel it any more. 

It was several years into their exile when he had noticed this particular kind of emptiness within himself: something akin to longing without any certain scope, directionless, purposeless, ungrounded. He couldn’t pinpoint when exactly that feeling took root within him but on one point at least he was sure: he had never felt like that before Bilbo Baggins. 

This was the soulmark’s working, he assumed. Carving a hollow space into one’s soul meant for just the one person to fill. 

“Doesn’t he deserve to know?” 

Thorin treaded cautiously. “Know what?” 

“That you are about to embark on a quest that you don’t plan on dying on, of course.” 

Thorin thought on it. That distant awareness of Bilbo’s existence had been a part of his mind for so long that he could not imagine now a world where Bilbo didn’t exist. It was a consoling thought, in a way, to know that at least his soulmate was living peacefully and safely, amidst the comforts of his home. And yes, Thorin was inexplicably but firmly certain that Bilbo was alive though he never sought any news of him. He could feel that at the very bottom of his heart. 

Was it the same for Bilbo? He wasn’t a Dwarf, after all; his core wasn’t carved out of stone, hard and enduring. Perhaps he was more like the earth, supple, yielding, changing with the season. Perhaps he had already forgotten Thorin. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice anything amiss in his world if Thorin were to die... 

“I can hear what you’re thinking and I say it’s rubbish!” Dís interrupted the course of his thoughts. “Bilbo wouldn’t have put such effort in his courtship back in Erebor if it had meant nothing to him. And – confound it, dear brother – nobody’s saying that you should jump right in courting him! I, for one, would start with an apology. Mahal knows he deserves one.” 

“What on Mahal’s rocky cradle would you have me do? Show up at his door with a rose–” 

“Better that than to not show up at all,” Dís said brusquely. “How long are you going to wait? Bilbo liked you, yes, but he’s not a Dwarf. He’s already middle-aged by the reckoning of his people. You have but a few decades left, Thorin. And what’s more....” she hesitated. “I’ve heard that Hobbits don’t always settle down with their soulmates. They think it bad luck, actually, and prefer to marry someone else. Bilbo wasn’t your average Hobbit, and he liked you well enough, but that’s not going to last if you keep on tarrying.” 

Thorin got up, stiff joints protesting a little after sitting for so long at the desk in his cold chamber. No matter how dutifully the Dwarves kept the fires high and roaring during the winter, they couldn’t drive out the chill of millennia of abandonment that still lingered within the inclement walls of ancient Belegost. No matter how many Dwarflings were running down the halls, filling the vast spaces with the lively echo of their laughter, the sombre ghosts of Dwarves long dead were stronger in number. This place had never felt like home. 

“I cannot abandon my place, and I believe our current life would not suit him,” he admitted. 

“That would be his decision to make, not yours,” Dís pointed out. “Even if you continue to live apart he deserves to know what had – and will have – happened to you.” 

Thorin ran a hand over his face. The coarse hair of his closely shorn beard scratched his palm. A new idea began to take form in his head. 

“I think I know how I am going to keep from driving myself spare before Spring comes,” he said hesitantly. “At least it will be warmer in the forge than in this draught-pestered shed.” 

Dís, as always, followed his mind without the need for words. She grinned. “Whatever makes you happy, brother.”   

 

*

 

One fine morning in late Astron, Bilbo sat on a bench in front of Bag End, a beautiful smoke ring slowly dissipating above the bowl of his forgotten pipe, and stared in dismay at the sight of a pointed grey hat bobbing its way up the Hill. 

“No. No way,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what the old badger wants now.” 

The said badger and owner of the hat had meanwhile stopped before Bilbo’s bench, leaned on his staff and, from the sour pitch of his mouth, it was clear that he was well within hearing distance of Bilbo’s thinking aloud. 

“Good morning, Bilbo Baggins,” Gandalf said disapprovingly. 

“Good morning it is to you, certainly,” Bilbo retorted. “The odds of it being good to me have rather dropped right now.” 

“Well, now, Bilbo, I remember you welcoming me much more gladly last time I arrived at Bag End!” 

“Said last time,” Bilbo groused, “was seventeen years ago.” 

After they were unceremoniously kicked out of Erebor, Gandalf had accompanied Bilbo on the return journey and saw to it that they made it back safely. As soon as Bilbo retrieved the keys from an overjoyed Hamfast Gamgee, Gandalf turned his horse and took off from the Shire as swiftly as if his whizz-poppers were cracking under his heels. 

Bilbo was left with a home that sorely needed dusting, enough leftover gold from the troll hoard to buy him a reputation of eccentric mathom collector for years to come, and a completely ruined reputation. He hadn’t seen either hide or hat of the Wizard since. 

During those seventeen years, Bilbo comfortably passed from the Eligible Bachelor category into the Confirmed Bachelor one, maintained a semi-regular correspondence with the young elves from the Last Homely House, and if he needed to visit a blacksmith, he usually took the extra route to Bree where he could find a Dwarven one. The Dwarf-friend bead, worn on a string around his neck, did wonders in ensuring that the work he commissioned would be the very top and not the shoddy job the Dwarves sometimes tried to fob off on unsuspecting customers that knew nothing of ironwork. 

Other than that, Bilbo hadn’t done anything to sully his family name for years. 

“That long, is it now?” Gandalf’s wide smile was as unrepentant as ever. “Well, so it is high time for another adventure, what do you say?” 

“I say you should try over the Hill or perhaps across the Water.” Bilbo got up and made a step towards the door only to be stopped by a staff across his feet. 

“Bilbo. Have you forgotten where the real world is?” 

“Not in my maps and books, I remember.” Bilbo looked up without smiling. “But I also remember that Hobbits are not meant to be a part of it,” he added quietly. 

“Oh my dear fellow.” Gandalf drew his eyebrows up and somehow managed to look entirely un-wizardly apologetic. “Yes, you were unjustly wronged, but if you knew... hm, but that’s not my tale to tell. But come now – everything wasn’t just for the bad, was it? You made some friends in Erebor. Friends who might need your help.” 

That thought made Bilbo pause. Images of Dwarven faces emerged before his mind’s eye – Dwalin with his ridiculous crest of hair, Ori’s eager eyes above a too thin nose, Frérin’s mess of gold hair and unbeatable cheer... Bilbo wondered how much they could have changed. Seventeen years couldn’t mean much for a Dwarf – perhaps a step from an apprenticeship into a profession for some of the youth Bilbo got to know there, but certainly not a change in looks. Why, he alone had barely changed, which was certainly odd by Shire standards and had begun to attract a lot of vague attention lately. Bilbo was fifty now, but still looked as if he came of age just a couple of years ago.   

But above all those once dear faces hovered an image of blue eyes with turbulent depths and hair as black as his moods, the face of young Thorin. Prince Thorin who had driven Bilbo to harsh words and forced him to stick to them, who placed the future – or any possibility whatsoever – of their relationship onto the fulfilment of a ridiculous oath and who apparently never even thought of Bilbo again. 

“I’m sorry, Gandalf,” Bilbo said with determination. “I don’t want any more adventures, thank you. If you want to step inside for tea–” he remembered his manners, “–I was just about to make myself second breakfast so–” 

“No tea, thank you,” Gandalf interrupted him. “I have yet to find someone to share in the adventure, mind you. I cannot tarry.” 

Bilbo nodded and opened the door. His hand hesitated a little on the doorknob but in the end he only nodded again and closed the door after himself.

 

*

 

“Well, I do think I just found that someone, after all,” Gandalf chuckled to himself and used the low end of his staff to scratch a small rune on the freshly painted door.

 

*

 

The sun was high in the sky and closing on noon when Thorin left the camp in the woods not far from Hobbiton, heading for the town. The ten remaining Dwarves of his company were ordered to remain close to the camp and venture out of the woods and to their destination no sooner than after nightfall. Very few Hobbits stayed out late and Thorin did not want their group to cause an unnecessary ruckus. Dwarves in the Shire, especially a heavily armed group as they were, were bound to attract unwelcome attention. 

They were to meet their burglar tonight, and tomorrow they would be on their way into the wilderness, and farther still, over the Misty Mountains and through the cursed woods to the Lonely Mountain. But before they set off there was one more task to be done, and Thorin wanted to settle that particular matter alone. Only Balin and Dwalin knew where he was off to, and Thorin had a vague feeling that as soon as he turned his back on the camp, the brothers had placed bets between each other. 

Thorin felt eyes upon him as he neared the more lived-in areas but one wandering Dwarf heading for the marketplace on Highday was only a little unusual. Enough to make the tongues waggle but not enough to provoke an uprising of the Hobbitry-in-arms. 

The Market in Hobbiton was a lively place at this time of day, Hobbits milling around the stalls and little Hobbitlings getting under everyone’s feet. Thorin had no idea where exactly Bilbo lived but he figured that the Market was his best bet on where to ask. 

He did not know exactly what he wanted to tell Bilbo once he found him. Ask for his forgiveness, certainly; explain the Quest to him and then... part in friendship? Or with a promise that once the Mountain was reclaimed, Thorin would like to come back for Bilbo, bring him to Erebor and to his rightful place as his soulmate and perhaps start a proper courting? Thorin did not know why that thought kept setting his insides aflutter but it did. Warm feeling spread through his chest at the thought of having someone to look forward to meeting again, someone who would be thinking of him, someone just for Thorin, once he won back their homeland and secured a life of peace and plenty for his people once again. 

Thorin was so deeply lost in those warm and enticing thoughts that he nearly missed the glint of sunlight on a russet head, a flash of amber gold so familiar that Thorin couldn’t believe seventeen years had passed since he saw it last, bobbing up and disappearing again in the crowd a little ahead of him. Thorin’s breath caught in his throat and something in his chest lurched forward even as he forced the rest of his body to stay back and not to run ahead, not to call out. 

Their last conversation was not something Thorin wanted to take up in public. He made himself breathe, unclench his fists and resume his slow pace, deliberately keeping a couple of Hobbits between himself and Bilbo Baggins. 

Bilbo looked... different. Not exactly in face or body – his hair still bounced in untameable curls over his forehead, not an extra wrinkle appeared on his round, mobile face. His bright-coloured silk waistcoat still fit snugly over his soft middle. Thorin was beginning to wonder if Dís was wrong for once in her knowledge on Hobbits because Bilbo seemed to have aged very slowly. But the difference Thorin now perceived lay elsewhere – not in Bilbo himself but in the way he related to his surroundings. 

In Erebor, Bilbo was easily the smallest person around. Cavernous spaces and massive architecture, designed to impress, belittled him even more. The Shire fashion of his clothing contrasted with the heavy and burly outfits of the Dwarrows and further accentuated his singularity. He had looked out of place, jarring like a word out of metre, and it was difficult to look past this first, gaudy impression to see the person confident in their own skin beneath it. 

In the Shire, Bilbo was in his own element. He didn’t need to tilt back his head to see eye-to-eye. Thorin watched the way other Hobbits nodded and sometimes even bowed slightly in greeting to Master Baggins. Bilbo was obviously respected here, his opinion mattered, his good graces were something to strive for – and he bore that regard with an easy attitude, like a person born to it. 

Thorin was rounding a greengrocer’s stall when a little commotion suddenly happened in the crowd between him and Bilbo. When it cleared, on Bilbo’s forearm and hip was hoisted a small boy with a riot of black curls and small button-like nose that reminded Thorin of... Bilbo. 

Thorin’s heart skipped a beat and his feet froze to the ground. He couldn’t understand a single word in the child’s excited babbling over the general chatter in the marketplace but there was definitely a familial resemblance between Bilbo and the boy despite their different colourings. The boy was dark and pale in all the places where Bilbo was coppery and tanned but his smile was definitely Bilbo’s, wide and sincere, mirrored on Bilbo’s face and lighting it up like a brilliant when he looked down on the boy. 

Thorin’s feet brought him a yard or two closer of their own volition. He caught the end of a childishly plaintive question– 

“.... think the lunch will be ready yet?” 

–and he clearly heard every word from Bilbo’s response which shattered the last remnants of his hopes to dust: 

“I’m sure it will, sweet pea. And keep your fingers out of your nose, Frodo Baggins! Where are your manners?” 

Thorin turned mechanically and hid behind the grocer’s stall. That little boy, currently being carried away with his arms thrown possessively over Bilbo’s neck, that little Hobbitling sharing Bilbo’s smile and nature and last name, was undoubtedly Bilbo’s son. 

There wouldn’t be anyone waiting to be brought to Erebor. There wouldn’t be anyone waiting just for Thorin. Dís was right. Bilbo might have liked him back in Erebor, but then he took Thorin’s spurning to heart, embraced the habit of his people and started a family with some suitable Hobbit lass. He did not waste decades of his life waiting for Thorin to fulfil his oath. 

Maybe he never intended to wait. 

Thorin groped blindly for his travel pack. Secreted at the bottom of it and carefully wrapped in linen cloth there was a single iron rose. Thorin had spent the long wait for spring in Ered Luin working on it in his forge, shaping one petal after another with painstaking care until the result looked almost like a live flower – only without its colour or fragrance. He believed that out of all Hobbits, Bilbo would understand and appreciate the gesture. 

Now Thorin threw the rose into a ditch. It meant nothing. 

Thorin didn’t remember how he got out of Hobbiton, the stares of Hobbits from behind the hedgerows not potent enough to pierce through his daze. When he appeared back in camp, one look at his face was all it took for Balin and Dwalin to jump up with their arms at the ready. 

“What happened?” 

“Are there orcs nearby?” 

Thorin stopped, blinked, and realised that he’d been walking so fast he’d been almost running, chest heaving with great exhausted breaths and fist clenched over the hilt of his sword so hard that his fingers hurt. He let go of the grip, swayed a little and then he allowed his legs to collapse under him, sitting down hard on a log by the campfire and staring into the fire ring that still reeked of smoke even after they’d poured water on the cinders, not wishing to keep the fire burning during the day out of precaution. The little pile of black, cold, wet ash reminded Thorin of his crushed hopes so aptly that he wanted to laugh. 

“Bilbo has married and has a son,” Thorin said from under strands of hair, head bent low to rest in his palms. Above him, Dwalin swore and thumped his hammer into the ground. Balin groaned. 

“That’s simply not fair!” 

“It’s hardly less fair than when he sought me out, brought me priceless gifts, and I called him a Shire rat for it,” Thorin said in a hollowed voice. He got up, ignoring the confused glances from the rest of the Company huddled nearby, and fixed the Fundinul brothers with an empty stare. 

“We’ll go to that burglar’s house tonight and then we leave early in the morning. See that everyone finds their way – go in pairs or each alone, a group would rouse the locals unnecessarily. I will meet you there.” 

He made to go towards the woods when a hand on his shoulder stopped him. 

“Where are you going, laddie?” Balin asked. 

Thorin squeezed his friend’s hand and pried it gently off his shoulder. “I need to be alone.” 

Balin nodded, his eyes dark and brow furrowed in compassion, and Thorin staggered away into the woods.

 

*

 

Bilbo paced his smial, from the front door all the way to the kitchen and back. Now and then he would try sitting down and reading but the words just stayed on the pages and didn’t make it into Bilbo’s eyes and head. Outside, dusk was slowly thickening into the night. Bilbo went to light up the candles, grateful for the excuse for another round through his home, and left the study for the last. His gaze lingered on the writing desk where a single iron rose was stuck in a vase; it was impossible not to look at it even though Bilbo knew that the sight would make all his thoughts stutter to a halt and resume anew, going round and round in annoying circles. 

He had been restless all evening, sick with waiting. He jumped at every sound from the outside. He longed – and feared – so hard to hear a knock at the door that once or twice he believed he really had heard it and went to check, only to find the doorstep empty. 

But now the night had fallen. Whatever the day was meant to bring, it hadn’t happened. Bilbo washed his face, changed from his sweat-drenched shirt into his comfortable dressing gown and went about making a dinner just for himself. 

The doorbell rang just as he was bringing the first bite to his mouth. Bilbo swore, put down the fork and ran to the door, indignation welling up in him like the foam in a barrel of scrumpy that had been left to ferment for too long. He flung the door open and– 

Bilbo stared, dumbfounded, at the bald, tattooed skull above a black beard and the equally annoyed stare of one Dwalin, son of Fundin. 

Bilbo opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, craned his head to look behind Dwalin’s shoulder, and finally blurted out: “So you’ve shaved it off.” 

Dwalin snorted, evidently remembering too, how Balin had teased him after the sparring lesson. “Aye. Seems that orcs don’t stop at chewing.” Bilbo noticed the partly bitten off ear and winced. 

After another moment of awkward silence Bilbo finally remembered they were still standing at the door. He stumbled a step back and motioned Dwalin to come in. “Ahem. Sorry. I wasn’t expecting... you.” 

“The same goes for me,” Dwalin growled. “Remind me to kill the Wizard.” With that, he dropped his travel cloak into Bilbo’s arms, the Hobbit nearly tripping under the weight, and went ahead into the dining room. 

To say that Bilbo was confused would be the understatement of the century. The mention of Gandalf though, pointed him in the right direction to the root of the matter. But the meddling Wizard’s affairs aside, Bilbo didn’t understand why Dwalin was so abrupt with him. Scowling and glaring, treating Bilbo like a manservant. They were friends, weren’t they? 

Bilbo hurried back into the dining room where Dwalin had already started on Bilbo’s dinner without as much as a by your leave. When Bilbo cleared his throat, Dwalin shot him a glance that dripped with hostility and grumbled with his mouth full: 

“Missus and the wee one at her parents’ tonight?” 

What? What missus, what parents? Bilbo opened his mouth to voice his confusion when the doorbell rang again. All things forgotten, he rushed to the door. 

This time, it was Balin. He, too, looked taken aback at seeing Bilbo, but then his expression turned sour just as Dwalin’s had. Bilbo was slowly nearing the end of his tether. Why were his friends looking at him as if he had poured a bucket of piss into their forge? 

“Well, I’m going to kill the Wizard,” Balin stated resolutely. 

“Dwalin’s already taking care of that,” Bilbo said. Then a thought occurred to him and he drew in a sharp breath. “Thorin’s coming too, isn’t he, after all?” 

“After all, aye,” Balin sighed, “and pity it is you didn’t wait for him, lad.” 

Bilbo blinked. Did Balin mean the already cooked – and probably eaten by now, thanks to Dwalin – dinner? 

“Why should I be waiting for him until he’s finished changing his mind?” Bilbo called after Balin who had, in the meantime, disappeared into Bilbo’s pantry. The Dwarf emerged with Bilbo’s best red wine, served himself a large swig right from the bottle and prophesised grimly: 

“This is going to end in tears.” 

Bilbo puffed up with indignation. “If you think I would burst into tears at the mere sight of him– ” 

“I wasn’t talking about you,” Balin sneered. “Of course, why would you cry?” 

Bilbo had had enough. He pointed a finger at Balin, drew a very deep breath, and– 

Eight more Dwarves tumbled through the door and ended in a heap at Bilbo’s feet. Dazed, Bilbo looked up. Of course. Gandalf’s pointed hat was making its way through the door as well. 

“Nori? Ori? Bofur?” Ah, and there was an unmistakable red beard braid. “Bombur! What are you all doing here?” 

“Master Baggins!” A grey-haired, very neatly braided and dressed Dwarf bowed to him swiftly. Bilbo remembered him, though vaguely – it was Dori, Ori’s eldest brother. “I had no idea you were to be our Company’s burglar!” 

“Oh. Um. The surprise is all mine, I assure you,” Bilbo got out when the pieces of the puzzle started to fall together. He glared at Gandalf to the best of his ability, not really paying attention to the rummaging in his pantry and the stampede currently wreaking havoc in his home. “So this is that adventure of yours. One that I distinctly remember declining to take part in.” 

Gandalf only laughed. “You’ve been sitting at home for too long, my dear fellow.” Then his face grew serious and he bent down to speak lower. 

“I guess you haven’t heard, but a Dragon came to Erebor the next year after you left. These Dwarves have all lost their home, their families. Thorin is the King now; he’d lost his grandfather, father, brother as well. They spent long years in poverty and misery. Now they have hope: a chance to reclaim Erebor. You can help them. Think on it, Bilbo.” 

Bilbo gaped, head reeling. The news of Thorin’s family struck a familiar wound. He was dismayed to hear about the deaths of Thráin and Frérin, the Dwarves he came to care for and who had cared for him, like a family. And a Dragon! He’d only ever read about them in books. He tried to remember the beauty and splendour of Erebor and shuddered when he imagined all that destroyed, defiled, stained by such a beast. 

He tiptoed carefully back into the dining room and looked over the Dwarves who were rapidly discussing something in Khuzdul. The newly arrived were no longer cheering and when they spotted him, instead of a smile they gave him an outright stink eye. What was happening? Suddenly Bilbo remembered the exact wording of that thrice-damned oath he had made in Erebor. Did they – did they blame Bilbo for the Dragon? 

Bilbo felt like fainting. “Gandalf, I–” 

There was a knock on the door. Everyone fell quiet. 

“He’s here,” Gandalf announced solemnly. Bilbo could hardly breathe. The Company gathered in the entrance to the dining room, squeezed together in the doorframe. 

“The leader of our Company, Thorin Oakenshield.” And Gandalf opened the door wide. 

“Gandalf. I thought you said this place would be easy...” Thorin’s aloof voice hitched and trailed off when his gaze fell upon Bilbo’s trembling figure, and all colour drained from his face. 

Bilbo swallowed convulsively. He’d been waiting for this encounter the whole afternoon and he was not about to faint. Not one bit. 

Then Thorin tore his gaze off him and fixed Gandalf with a dark glare. “You were supposed to get us a burglar.” 

“And I did. The very best,” Gandalf put his hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. 

“This is hardly burglar material,” Thorin shook his head, pointedly not looking at Bilbo. “Master Baggins cannot be expected to join on our Quest when he would be leaving a small child behind.” 

What? Bilbo nearly choked on his own tongue. Thorin droned on, in the same overly polite and unbearably cold tone: 

“Our apologies for the inconvenience. I hope my Company has not frightened your family. We shall cease occupying your home this instant.” 

As if someone had given him a sound clip round the ear, Bilbo suddenly saw the light. Everything made sense now and Bilbo could laugh at the sheer, mind-numbing thick-headedness of Thorin Oakenshield, but now it was more important that he finally got to speak uninterrupted. He drew a deep breath and said, very clearly and very reasonably: 

“Thorin, I don’t have a family.” 

If anyone had dropped a pin at that moment, the noise of it would probably have been enough to bring the smial down. 

“You... don’t have a family,” Thorin repeated. 

“I don’t have a family,” Bilbo confirmed patiently, resisting the tug on his lips that threatened to burst into hysterical laughter. 

“I think it would be best to leave those two to sort it out between them,” Gandalf said and hustled the rest of the Company back into the dining room.

 

*

 

Thorin followed Bilbo into the study. There was much shouting and excited chatter in the dining room but here, they had the hush and calm they needed. 

Bilbo closed the door behind them and before Thorin could open his mouth, Bilbo rounded on him and asked sharply: 

“You weren’t going to see me after all, were you? All of you – Dwalin, Balin, you – expected to meet some Hobbit burglar, not me.” 

It wasn’t really a question and Thorin only nodded in confirmation. Bilbo was incensed. After all that tramping upon from the Company, the confusion, the shock, finally he was in the mood he needed to deal with this stubborn, unbelievable Dwarf. 

“You see this, Thorin?” Bilbo pointed to the rose. “Look me in the eyes and tell me it’s not from you,” he demanded. 

Thorin dropped his eyes. “I crafted that, aye.” 

“Some fauntlings came by after the lunch,” Bilbo ranted on. “‘There’s been a Dwarf in Hobbiton, a Dwarf, Master Baggins!’” he parroted. “They ran to me because I am apparently the resident expert on Dwarves and they brought me what they saw the Dwarf throw away. Into a ditch.” 

Bilbo pinched the bridge of his nose and prayed his voice didn’t shake. “Do you know what I was thinking? I knew it was you. Who else would make an iron flower? I had thought, Thorin, that you finally did what I asked of you all those years ago. I had thought you were coming for me. And I had thought, because that was what it looked like, that you had chickened out in the end and changed your mind and decided you’d be better off without me. Again.”   

Thorin looked stricken. 

“I spent the entire afternoon searching for you, all around Hobbiton. In the end I figured you had left straight away,” Bilbo finished. 

“I saw you at the marketplace,” Thorin began to speak, slowly and quietly. “You were carrying a child. The boy had your smile, his name was Baggins, what else was I to think–” 

“That was Frodo, my little cousin!” Bilbo exclaimed. “A son of my cousin, Drogo Baggins! At least twenty people this side of the Water bear the name of Baggins!” 

“I had assumed. Misjudged,” Thorin admitted. “If I had known...” 

“Oho, not knowing is only half of the excuse,” Bibo laughed bitterly. “When you saw me with Frodo, you could have asked who he was to me. But in your infernal pride you immediately decided that I had somehow betrayed you and that actually speaking with me was no longer needed!”

It must have cost Thorin much pain but he didn’t deny it. Instead, he said: 

“I thought you had moved on. Disturbing that... seemed inappropriate.” 

Bilbo exhaled. The fire was leaving him. “Even if I had, you’re my soulmate.” He waved his hand in the air, shaking his wrist. “You will always have a place of importance in my life. We could have become friends.” 

Thorin stared at him for so long that Bilbo began wondering what was so wrong about anything he’d said, and then Thorin looked down and to the side and said, very quietly: 

“I was hoping for more than that.” 

Bilbo gritted his teeth to remain calm but inwardly, he flailed. This was escalating too quickly. He turned to the desk, thinking hard on his next words, on what he wanted. His fingers touched the delicate, cool petals of the iron rose. 

“I imagine this has taken quite a while to make,” he said. 

Thorin seemed to take it as the cue it was. “After Erebor, during all those years, I’ve been thinking of you. Of my mistakes. In Erebor, I doubted you – doubted us,” he corrected himself. “I wanted to dislike you. I’ve never been more wrong. Bilbo, if I told you a part of me loved you from the start would you–” 

“Then I’d say that you did a terrible job of showing it,” Bilbo huffed. 

Thorin looked miserable. Diminished, humbled, utterly wrong. It was a bitter victory, Bilbo thought. There was a time he had wished to see Thorin grovel but now when he had his wish, his heart ached at the sight. A king should never look like this. Bilbo thought on the whole emotional turmoil this day had brought him and shrank a little. It was nice to feel justified, vindictive even, to dream of Thorin coming to his door, repentant and apologetic. But to be loved – and to love – someone who bore lines of weariness in their face from having gone through such hardships, someone who was about to face a Dragon – Bilbo didn’t think he was strong enough to handle it. Thorin had grown so much over the years, from a spoiled and immature Prince into a brave and selfless King, whereas Bilbo had spent that time in idleness, shrinking from the young  adventurous Hobbit he once was into a middle-aged, comfortably living one. He was frightened by the magnitude of it all. 

“Thorin, I...” he began. Clenched his fists. He had to get through this. “Seventeen years are an awful lot of time. You’re still young – I know, older than me, but for a Dwarf – and I am no more. I wish... I wish you had moved on.” 

“I will never love another,” Thorin vowed, solemn, resigned and infinitely sad. Bilbo bit his lip and felt the anger in him well up all over again. 

“Is that supposed to make me love you back?” he exploded. “Just because I have your soulmark doesn’t make me your property! We Hobbits grow our love, cultivate it, we don’t just – stumble upon it like on a shiny stone in the rock.”

As soon as he ended his tirade, Bilbo felt like a brat. This feeling of being claimed, deprived of a free choice, of having one’s life decided for them just because they had a soulmark - that was what had antagonised Thorin against Bilbo when they first met. Thorin’s angry denial was certainly an excessive response to this perceived violation, and Bilbo had been mightily cross with him for it - but now he saw that he was no better than the Dwarf.   

Bilbo ran a hand through his hair and tried to breathe evenly, to stay calm. 

“Thorin, I was young and foolish, terribly conceited, shortsighted and inconsiderate when I first came to Erebor. I saw it as an adventure, falling in love, courting you, as if it was a test for me to pass – I didn’t think on what it must have been to you. How... manipulated and wronged you must have felt. I’m sorry for that.” 

“Do not be sorry,” Thorin said, voice rough. “I beg of you never to be sorry for what you felt for me.” 

Bilbo’s hand moved on its own volition, reaching out to touch Thorin’s arm – then he snapped it back and folded his arms across his chest. 

“When you get your home back, I want to be your friend, Thorin. I’ll always be your friend. Anything more we had, back then... was then. It’s long gone.” 

Bilbo watched Thorin nod, face set in stone, and wished he could snuff the ache in his heart as easily as one would snuff a candle, just with a snap of his fingers, light in one moment and darkness in another.

 

*

 

There was nothing to dwell on any more. Bilbo had agreed to be his friend – it was far more than Thorin deserved. He couldn’t well mourn the loss of something that was never his in the first place, could he? Once, he almost had Bilbo’s heart in his palm, and he tossed it away. 

Thorin moved to leave the room. When he opened the door, echoes of the merry gathering feasting in the dining room reached their ears. The Company was singing and laughing, without a care for tomorrow. They didn’t know yet they were short of a burglar. Bilbo didn’t seem too keen on adventures any more and Thorin wouldn’t want him to go anyway. Even if he could get over the pain of rejection and settle for friendship instead, he wouldn’t want to lead Bilbo into such peril. 

Bilbo listened on for a moment. “Gandalf told me what happened in Erebor,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for all your losses.” He sounded honest and Thorin accepted that with a nod. 

“I have gained as well,” Thorin said after a while in which neither of them seemed willing to move away. “True friends...” he looked towards the dining room, “my purpose,” his fingers closed on the key Gandalf gave him that evening in Bree, “and my name.” 

Bilbo leaned on the wall by the door and his face took on a contemplative look. 

“Do you think this is how we were supposed to meet? You, coming here to hire a burglar?” 

Thorin shrugged. “Perhaps we would hold each other in higher regard now than we did when we first met.” 

Bilbo laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. You’re still the leader of an awfully ill-mannered company of Dwarves that has eaten me out of house and home, and I...” 

Bilbo’s gaze seemed to catch on something on the shelves of the library and he sobered. “I am a Hobbit, and I know you don’t have much reason to think well of Hobbits.” 

Thorin remembered the scorn and distrust the Dwarves were met with during their journey, remembered how he had lost his Durin beads. He shook his head, wry smile on his face. “That I do not,” he admitted, “save for one.” 

He left Bilbo staring down at the floor of his study, lost in thought, and went back to join his Company. The feast was already over. His Dwarves were rarely guests to such a plenty of food these days, and they had made the most of the opportunity. 

When they saw the shadow of resignation on his face, the merriment slowly trickled out from them. Balin went to him and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder but there was nothing more to be said or done. Tomorrow, they would be on their way. 

When Bofur started to hum the tune of the Song of the Lonely Mountain, no song had ever seemed more fitting.

 

_Far over the Misty Mountains cold_

_To dungeons deep and caverns old_

_We must away_

_Ere break of day_

_To find our long forgotten gold_

 

Bofur sang the first stanza, serious and sombre in a way he rarely was, and then Thorin picked up the tune with the words of their new abode, cold and decaying halls of Belegost that never felt like a home.

 

_Far away from halls of refuge cold_

_From regrets deep and grudges old_

_We must away_

_Ere break of day_

_Who lost his home now must be bold_

_Far away from all that keeps us here_

_With heart of steel and purpose clear_

_We must away_

_Ere break of day_

_To see our fates in Mirrormere_

 

 

*

 

Bag End was long quiet, last of the Dwarves tucked in for the night. Bilbo lay in his bed, tossing his head on the pillow, and couldn’t sleep. 

The haunting song was still playing in his head. It seemed so grave, so final. Tomorrow, Thorin would be away. In all likelihood, they wouldn’t see each other again. Bilbo had already had his adventure and it was over. It had been over for seventeen years. 

Bilbo could feel the pull to Thorin like a tangible string, tugging at his heart and denying him sleep. He couldn’t simply close his eyes when he knew that Thorin slept just a wall away. Exasperated, Bilbo sat up, lit the candle and rested his head in his hands. 

If Thorin in Erebor was quite the sight to behold, Thorin here in Bag End stirred everything that Bilbo thought was safely locked away. Without his regalia, elaborate armour, priceless clasps and beads Thorin looked solid, vibrant, a focal point of everyone’s attention, a potent presence in Bilbo’s home that suddenly seemed quiet and empty like a museum without him. The wide world, everything Bilbo ever dreamed of, was condensed in that strong body and deep eyes. And tomorrow, this world would be gone, and Bilbo... 

Bilbo got up. For what, he didn’t even know, but he knew he had to see Thorin, one last time. 

He hastily threw his dressing gown over his nightshirt and lit another candle, taking it with him. He opened his door a crack, intending to sneak through his own home, like the burglar he refused to be, and quietly tap on Thorin’s door. Hopefully the Dwarf wouldn’t be asleep yet. 

Thorin indeed wasn’t asleep. When Bilbo opened his door a little wider, he found Thorin on the other side, waiting for him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Thorin and Dís are quoting was loosely inspired by a Czech poem "Kdo nemá doma stání" by Klement Bochořák. The entire thing (that Thorin and Dís probably had to learn as children) goes like this:
> 
>  
> 
> _The silence of night ails me_  
>  yet there is no cure  
> in chasing a dream, however great  
> its beauty and allure
> 
>  
> 
> _The silence of night haunts me_  
>  my dreams is what I fear  
> my dreams is what I want to escape  
> somewhere far from here  
>  
> 
> The Song of the Lonely Mountain is movie canon up to the end of the first stanza (there are lots of other stanzas in the original version of the song in the book, about gold and harps and whatnot, go check it out:)); the other two are mine. I tried my best! :)


	10. Ere Break of Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful StrivingArtist created [an incredible art ](http://striving-artist.tumblr.com/post/135073559567/this-got-a-bit-abstract-on-me-but-thats-because)for this chapter, and I am forever charmed by it. Go look and flail with me :)

_ _

 

_Thorin stood on the other side, waiting for him._

Bilbo felt the world slowing down around them, an eternity passing between one heartbeat and another. Soft light from Bilbo’s candle trickled through the crack in the door and pooled at Thorin’s feet. The Dwarf stood there, solid and motionless, and yet, everything about him seemed to be drawing towards Bilbo, like the night sky, that looked so unchanging, and yet, cannot help but circle around the North Star. Thorin’s face was a play of half-light and shadows, expression heavy with meaning, eyes bright with intent.

Bilbo didn’t trust his own throat to manage more than the most basic words. “What do you want, Thorin?”

Thorin took one step closer to the half-opened doors. His voice was deep and quiet, carried on the flickering shadows and the scent of burning wax.

“I want to lie with you tonight.”

Bilbo sucked in a sharp breath. He didn’t know he wanted that too, not until he saw Thorin on the threshold of his room. But he wanted, oh, how much he wanted, and the realisation shook him to the core and left him grasping in panic onto the first safety line he could think of: the doubt.

“If this is some twisted apology–”

“No, it is not.”

There was no guilt in Thorin’s face, as far as Bilbo could see, and Bilbo wanted to believe him. But he knew he couldn’t have borne it if this was just another matter to settle for Thorin, a repayment for what happened so many years ago in the bathhouse. It had to be more than that.

Bilbo took one step back into the room, holding the door open. Thorin slowly moved into the offered space, one inch at a time, like groundwater silently filling a drained well. The door closed behind them with a silent click.

“There is no debt between us,” Bilbo insisted.

“None at all,” Thorin agreed and reached out. His fingers traced the hem around the opening of Bilbo’s dressing gown. The light of the candle flailed with the shaking of Bilbo’s hand and he had to take one more step back to put it safely onto the table. Thorin followed him step to step and Bilbo felt his throat go dry.

“Then what is this?” he asked, in a last feeble attempt to reason a way out of this, into some safe and distant place where he couldn’t feel and couldn’t get hurt.

“This is now.” Thorin hooked one finger inside the collar of Bilbo’s nightshirt and pulled him closer. Bilbo went along with the movement without thinking, like a reed in a wind, bending to his body’s desires and blind to his sensibilities.

“This is giving in,” Thorin whispered, his breath skidding along Bilbo’s hairline.

“For tonight.”

Bilbo never knew that feelings could have colours, but now he was sure that he knew at least the colour of one. It was longing, and it had the colour of Thorin’s eyes: like a breach in a heavy blanket of storm clouds, where a patch of clear sky shone with the purest blue.

Oh, it was so not just for tonight, Bilbo thought. Thorin’s face was so open, so bare and unrestrained, that Bilbo felt a prick of shame at his own reservation.  Thorin’s every sense was focused solely on Bilbo, as if he didn’t want to miss a moment of what was about to happen. Bilbo suspected that those moments would be all that Thorin would hold on to for the rest of his life.

At least, and with a painful certainty, Bilbo knew that he would. It was going to break his heart but he would take this one night. And in the determined glint in Thorin’s eyes, a blaze of burned bridges, Bilbo saw he wasn’t alone in this decision. With the tiniest nod to himself, Bilbo let his dressing gown fall open, shrugged it off his shoulders and tangled his fingers in the laces at the collar of Thorin’s tunic, pausing before the next step like in a dance.  

“Bilbo.” Thorin stood so close to him, just a breath shy of touch, his every exhale caressing Bilbo’s face and making his hair stand on end, and yet he still held himself back. “You have to say yes or no.”

Bilbo frowned. Wasn’t his intention clear? Which of his actions gave out even the slightest hint of refusal? But then he understood, and something around his heart began to crumble. What Thorin wanted to hear wasn’t just a simple consent to a few hours of shared bed, skin on skin, mutual pleasure. It would be so much more than a simple yes. It would be _Yes, my heart is breaking too_ , and _Yes, I’ll never forget you_ , and perhaps even _Yes, I’ve never loved before and I fear I’ll never love again the way I love you_. It was all that and Thorin was waiting for it, his eyes darkening more with pain with every moment Bilbo spent hesitating.

Bilbo gave in. He’d been lost the moment he opened his door. He pulled himself up onto his toes and let his parted lips touch the soft skin next to Thorin’s ear, just above the first coarse hair of his beard.

“Yes,” he whispered there, and kissed the word right off the heated skin.

A shudder ran through Thorin’s body and Bilbo could feel the rush of his heartbeat where their chests were pressed against each other. Something within Thorin’s strong frame broke and collapsed, as if the fear of rejection was the last thing to hold him upright, and he folded his head and shoulders in Bilbo’s arms and hid his face against the side of Bilbo’s neck, breathing him in with deep gulps of air, still not kissing, just nudging under Bilbo’s jaw like a big bear nosing around for honey.

“Yes,” Bilbo repeated and buried his hands in the silken flood of dark hair, bringing Thorin’s head up to press a kiss between his brows to smooth the desperate line there. It was so much easier saying it again. He closed his eyes and let his face slide across the roughness of the beard, the unfamiliar scratch setting a burning sensation spreading under his skin, every nerve ending alive and tingling.

“Yes,” he breathed, right on the precipice of Thorin’s mouth, and swallowed the gasp that came out, falling into the kiss like a man letting go off the edge of a ravine: dreading the end and yet rejoicing in the terrible beauty of the flight.

  


*

  


Thorin held onto Bilbo’s shoulders just as desperately as he once held onto the oak branch that had saved his life. Bilbo was pressing up to him, the heat of his skin just two layers of fabric away, and Thorin’s palms itched with desire to feel what he once saw, only briefly, in the bathhouse – tantalisingly smooth softness, no more than a thin fuzz of sparse hair on the Hobbit’s chest. Bilbo’s mouth tasted like warm bread, fresh mint, and sweet acquiescence, and his hands roamed freely across Thorin’s arms and back, hitching up his tunic and sliding beneath, fingers digging into the small of his back with possessiveness that Thorin longed to reciprocate – but a deep rooted shame was holding him back.

He would not lose control like the first time. He was still ashamed of how vicious, how selfish he’d been then. Bilbo had been justified to think that Thorin felt indebted to return the favour but it wasn’t what he wanted now.

Tonight, he wanted to feel, and if it meant risking his heart to prove he could, then so be it. The last remnants of his protective shell of pride had shattered when he decided to go to Bilbo, and Thorin had stepped over the shards as he walked out of his room.

Tonight, he wanted honesty. Words could lie, touch and taste couldn’t. The stifled formality of courtship could have been playing pretend, but the flush spreading across skin – the quickening of a heartbeat – the tightening of fingers grasping at his hair, that couldn’t be a lie. Pride and self-preservation were a small price for such a gift.

Bilbo had manoeuvred them towards his bed, divesting them both of their clothes as they went, never breaking the contact between them. Thorin, too, was unwilling to stop touching Bilbo even for a little while. It was as if they both were driven by an irrational fear that should they stop, should they lose the feel of skin on skin, whatever spell that bound them together would break and they would find themselves back in their separate rooms, forever besieged by their respective grudges and fears.

Bilbo lay down first, pulled Thorin down onto himself and swiftly rolled them over, his smile widening into a self-satisfied grin. Thorin suspected that Bilbo enjoyed doing this, ordering around someone so much taller and heavier than him as much as he liked. He rewarded Thorin’s pliancy with a deep, heady kiss and then nudged and pushed at his chin and upper arms until Thorin took the hint and scooted up in the bed to lean against the headboard. Pleased like the cat that got the cream, Bilbo settled in his lap, his shifting weight awakening Thorin’s interest into an insistent need, and from Bilbo’s grin it was clear that he was well aware of the effect he had on his lover. Thorin took up the invitation to run his hands all over him, from shoulders and arms with a hint of muscle under soft skin to a rounded belly that looked like a delectable pillow for Thorin to lay his head on every weary evening - but he quickly squashed the thought. There was tonight, and then there was the impossible.

Bilbo took a good while just arranging Thorin’s hair on the pillow that supported his shoulders, running his fingers through the strands and laying them into gentle waves all around his head. His gaze gradually lost its playful bossiness and after a while, a strange shadow passed over Bilbo’s face and he sighed. Thorin felt the anxiety, already kissed and caressed almost into oblivion, curl inside his stomach anew.

“What is wrong, Bilbo?”

Bilbo closed his eyes and shook his head, and when he opened them again, they shone with a flame darker than any sapphire Thorin had ever seen.

“Nothing is wrong,” Bilbo said, passing a fingertip over Thorin’s bottom lip. The feather light caress left behind a tingle that made him bite his lip to stop it, and when he released his lip from between his teeth, he noticed that Bilbo was watching it with darkened eyes.

“You’re just... almost unbearably beautiful,” Bilbo breathed out, leaning down for another kiss. Thorin felt his face heat up. He dodged the kiss with a little shift of his head, nipping instead on the unbelievably smooth skin along the edge of Bilbo’s jaw, leaving a trace of flushed skin as he went, and noticing with delight the tremble of Bilbo’s arms braced on both sides of his head. Then Thorin pulled back and raised a teasing eyebrow.

“Almost?”      

The glimpse of sharp teeth in Bilbo’s grin made Thorin’s heart kick in his chest.

“Oh, I think I’ll bear it,” Bilbo whispered and this time, as he broke their next kiss, he kept Thorin’s bottom lip between his teeth, pulling and scraping and soothing with the tip of his tongue over and over again until Thorin groaned and responded in kind, engulfing Bilbo in his arms and following his lead with biting teeth and greedy strokes of tongue. The heat of his blood was becoming harder to keep in check with every passing moment.

Then he felt Bilbo’s hands disappear from his body and heard a wooden, shuffling sound. Something made of glass clinked and rattled in the bedside table where Bilbo groped blindly, and in the next moment, Bilbo was pressing a small bottle of oil into his palm and guiding Thorin’s other hand between his thighs.

Thorin struggled for breath for a moment, two conflicting urges clashing and tearing him apart. That simple gesture stoked the burning coals within him into all-consuming flames and he wanted nothing more than to roll them over, cover Bilbo’s body with his own, and ride the wildfire until he burned out all his strength. But the memory of the bathhouse lay on his heart, heavy like ice on a river in early spring, dousing his desire with a cold spray of shame. He could not forget himself in pleasure, he could not use his soulmate like that again.

“Bilbo,” Thorin forced out past his constricted throat, “I could not–”

“Please, Thorin.” Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his hips and rubbing himself against Thorin’s fingers. “I want that. I want...”

He turned his head to the side, expression tight, brows drawn together in painful desperation, and did not finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.  

 _You. I want you_. Thorin heard those unspoken words nonetheless and like before, his heart didn’t know what do to first: to burst with joy at the knowledge that Bilbo would not only allow him this but that he would demand it, covet it, crave him – or at the same time, to curl on itself with the sinking realisation that Bilbo didn’t want to say it, couldn’t make himself acknowledge it aloud.  

“All right.” Thorin put the bottle on the sheets and cupped Bilbo’s face in his hand, turning it back. He passed his thumb over one round cheekbone in a soothing caress. He would take anything Bilbo would give him. As long as he had Bilbo’s dark, expressive, burning eyes on him, he didn’t need his words.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” Thorin said as he poured the thick, almond-scented oil over his fingers. Bilbo shifted higher up on him for better reach and grinned.

“You won’t,” he promised and leaned down, planting his elbows on either side of Thorin’s head and nuzzling his face in the mass of his hair, humming with pleasure like a purring cat and offering his neck in an inviting arch, right next to Thorin’s mouth. Faced with such a temptation, Thorin didn’t even think of resisting. He gently took the smooth, hairless skin there between his teeth and tasted it with his tongue, feasting on the salty taste and Bilbo’s tiny bitten-off moans as his finger slipped into the gripping heat of Bilbo’s body.

Having Bilbo like this, seeing his skin glowing golden in the candlelight, hearing his quiet sighs and little whimpers, feeling him writhe and squirm and push down on his fingers, it was a kind of exquisite torture just to lie back and let Bilbo do as he pleased. Bilbo’s heat, his scent and the taste of him was all around Thorin, surrounding him like a blanket and Thorin tried not to drown in it, grasping at the straws of his self-control, letting Bilbo set the pace. Bilbo moved slowly but always wanted more, asking for it with insistent kisses, and the sight of his lover transported in pleasure was tearing Thorin between ecstasy and desperation.

There was no sign of discomfort or tenseness in Bilbo’s face, despite the considerable girth of Thorin’s fingers, only concentration and enjoyment. Thorin wondered if Bilbo was used to pleasuring himself this way, and he had to close his eyes and press his head into the pillow at the mental image. Did he think of Thorin, sometimes? But then the rush of arousal faded, and a dark, hurtful thought seized him instead: perhaps Bilbo had taken other lovers, other people who got to see him like this…

A strange, bubbling sound snapped Thorin out of his brooding and he opened his eyes to the sight of Bilbo... laughing? Yes, Bilbo was rocking above him, little bursts of giggles escaping his throat interspersed with sighs and half-suppressed gasps, and he was looking at Thorin with the sparks of mirth in his eyes.

“Yes to the first, and no to the second,” Bilbo giggled, and Thorin frowned in confusion. Was his jealousy really so visible?

“Stop thinking,” Bilbo told him affectionately. Then he lifted his hips, batted away Thorin’s hand and groped around in the sheets for the rest of the oil.

“You were thinking of me,” Thorin groaned, gripping handfuls of sheets in his fists in a mighty effort not to lose it then and there. If having his fingers inside of Bilbo was a sweet torture, Thorin couldn’t think of a way to describe the feeling of the excruciatingly tight heat sinking onto him, burning its way down slowly like molten rock flowing down the mountain slope.

“Of course I was thinking of you,” Bilbo got out between panting breaths. “After I’ve had a taste of you–”

Thorin was glad that he was resting on his back because he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up if he tried, every muscle tensed to the point of snapping and quivering with the effort to hold still. Sweat trickled past his brows and his eyes burned but he didn’t even want to blink, unwilling to lose even the smallest moment of Bilbo, beautiful golden Bilbo, his Bilbo rising and sinking and biting his lip and squeezing his eyes shut–

“Look at me,” Thorin rasped. He had to have Bilbo’s eyes on him. He couldn’t bear the thought that perhaps it was just a fantasy of him or someone else altogether that was now before Bilbo’s inner sight. It had to be him, Thorin, right in this moment. Thorin wanted it more than his own release: to be the one Bilbo was looking at on their only night together.

“Look at me, Bilbo, please.”  

Eyes darker than midnight sky, Bilbo obliged. Perhaps he understood the insistence in Thorin’s voice because he didn’t close them again. The candle on the table was burning low now, casting long shadows over the room, and Bilbo’s eyes traced the contours of Thorin’s arms and chest, hands following the path with appreciative touches. Thorin balanced himself on one elbow and reached out to card his free hand through Bilbo’s hair. The strain this position put on him made the muscles on his abdomen ripple and the tendons on his shoulders stand out, but it was worth the hunger in Bilbo’s gaze as he watched.

Remembering something, Thorin ran his fingers along the outer shell of one pointed ear. The reaction was immediate. Bilbo’s hips stuttered, a wild tremble ran through his entire body, and he leaned forward into Thorin’s palm, silently asking for more.

Emboldened, Thorin sat upright and latched onto Bilbo’s ear with his mouth. Bilbo cried out softly and clutched at Thorin’s shoulders, fingernails leaving lines of white pain there but it only spurred Thorin further. He cradled Bilbo’s body in one arm and rocked with him, sucking and lapping and breathing hotly at the sensitive shell and drinking in the overwhelmed sounds Bilbo was making. Bilbo’s arousal was pressed snugly between their sweat-slicked bellies and Thorin could feel it twitch and throb with each lick on Bilbo’s ear. His own endurance was rapidly dissolving and he knew he couldn’t last much longer. With the last of his self-control he took the soft lobe between his teeth and gently bit down, simultaneously pinching the other ear between his fingers and snapping his hips forward.

Bilbo tensed, for a moment suspended just under the peak of pleasure, and then he came apart, shuddering and gasping out one word:

“Thorin–”

That was all it took for Thorin to follow him over the edge. He buried his face in Bilbo’s shoulder to stifle his groan and rocked a few times more until the last of the white sparks ceased to dance along his spine and before his eyes.

He came back to the sticky feeling of sweat cooling on his skin and unwanted thoughts brooding in his head. Now that Thorin got what he wanted, he was surely no longer welcome in Bilbo’s bed. The Company had to rise early to leave before dawn; he should be getting some rest. And yet, Thorin couldn’t stomach the thought of parting with Bilbo now. He didn’t even want to let him go out of his arms and did so with great reluctance, only after Bilbo tapped on his shoulder, gently but quite resolutely.

Bilbo padded on silent feet into the adjoining bathroom and Thorin sat on the edge on the bed, contemplating the floor. This was a mistake. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

Bilbo came back, handed him a wet washcloth to wipe off his belly and blew out the remainder of one candle before it could spill into a puddle of wax on the table.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said exasperatedly. “Stay here. Just don’t steal the covers.”

Thorin nodded, grateful that Bilbo was now slipping the nightshirt over his head and couldn’t see his self-conscious face. He could already feel the pull of sleep on him, weariness of the well-used muscles mingling with the exhaustion of his heart. He laid himself back down, feeling, more than seeing through his heavy eyelids, Bilbo settle next to him, throwing the quilt over both of them and snuggling his face into a pillow with a contended sigh.

“Thank you,” he heard a whisper, just as sleep was overcoming him, and in that half-dreamy state, he couldn’t tell which one of them had said it.

  


*

  


Bilbo supported his head on one hand and watched the sleeping face of his lover – lover for one night.

Tomorrow, Thorin would be gone. Bilbo remembered well the song the Dwarves sang.

_We must away_

_Ere break of day…_

 

Sweet tiredness was weighing on him but Bilbo had one more thing on his mind. When he demanded Thorin confirm that there was no debt between them, Bilbo wasn’t entirely truthful. There was one thing he owed to the Dwarven king.

Bilbo never got to complete his courtship. Only two gifts out of three were given and accepted. One of iron, one of gold – and the third one that should surpass them both, either in value or in importance, was the one that Bilbo never had the time to give.

The stars outside still shone bright, there was still time until dawn. Bilbo silently crept out of bed and tiptoed to his study. When he got back, he carried a small parcel wrapped in parchment and covered with a flowing tengwar cursive, an indication of a hand skilled with pen.

Ere break of day, Bilbo would complete the courtship, putting the last unfinished matter between them to rest. Thorin would be free to go and never to return. There would be nothing to keep him, nothing for him to come back to.

Bilbo sat down on the bed next to Thorin, careful not to disturb his sleep, and set to work.

 

 

*

 

 

The dawn had long bloomed into broad daylight by the time Bilbo opened his eyes the next day, to a cold bed and an empty home.

Bag End felt so big without the Company. Bilbo padded through the rounded corridors, half expecting to run into a Dwarf or two, but nobody was there. Gone were Bofur’s songs and Ori’s loud courage, Balin’s dry humour and Dwalin’s rather crude one, Gandalf’s all-knowing gaze and Thorin’s…

Bilbo stopped dead in his tracks in front of his study. The iron rose still stood in its place on the table. Bilbo stared at it for a long while, heart numb and mind blank. A rose was a flower of love; a finer meaning depended on the colour. The shaped and wrought iron of this piece was dark grey, almost blue, and Bilbo remembered what the elusiveness of a blue rose conveyed: _I can’t have you but I can’t stop thinking about you._

If a Hobbit gave him such a flower, Bilbo would have known what it meant. But Thorin was a Dwarf, he couldn’t have known the language of flowers... for him, it was a gift of iron.

Bilbo’s next steps brought him to a halt in front of his mother’s framed maps. He remembered the days Belladonna used to stand on this same spot, humming to herself and tracing unknown paths with her eyes, a faraway smile on her lips and a forgotten tray of sponge cake in her arms.

“A Took through and through, always with her head in the clouds,” some of his Baggins aunts would mutter in front of Bungo and little Bilbo, sipping disapprovingly on their cake-less tea and frowning at her absentmindedness.

“It’s a Baggins thing to keep one’s feet on the ground,” Bungo would reply good-naturedly before getting up and taking on the role of host.

“Mam’s walking on the ground too, isn’t she?” Bilbo had asked later, still too young to understand metaphors. His father chuckled to himself and ruffled the curls on top of Bilbo’s head.

“Mam certainly doesn’t fly, and good thing it is that she can’t,” Bungo winked conspiratorially. He was folding a blanket into a neat roll and fastening it to the straps on his backpack. They were planning to go to Rivendell over the summer, and Bilbo was meant to spend the hot months at the Great Smials of Tuckborough with the family of his grandfather. Bilbo was already looking forward to it. Growing up as the only child could get lonely but the horde of his Took cousins promised to make up for that.

“A Baggins always keeps his feet on the ground,” his father smiled at him and added, “but a good Baggins also keeps his eyes on the stars.”

Bilbo snapped out of his memories with a start, took one look out of the window to estimate how far the sun had already risen, and nearly tripped over his own feet as he ran into his store room to pack.

 

 

*

 

 

Thorin rode first in the line of eleven Dwarves and one Wizard, following the East Road out of the Shire in the early morning hours before most of the local folk would be up and wondering at the passing Company. He could hear the occasional murmur from behind, most often a jab aimed at Gandalf for his extraordinarily poor choice of burglar. Thorin kept his eyes resolutely on the road and ignored everyone.

It was because of this determination to avoid being asked unnecessary and stupid questions that it wasn't until they were already near the borders of the Shire that he first faced his companions in the light of day. Thorin had turned in his saddle to give out an order to stop and have a late breakfast – they had set out on an empty stomach, slipping out of Hobbiton before sunrise – when Balin suddenly choked in the middle of a word he was saying to Dwalin and stared at Thorin as if he had just seen a ghost.

“Y-your beads, Thorin,” he got out at last, lips trembling.

Thorin frowned impatiently. So what if they were a little askew when they set out? He didn’t remove them yesterday before getting into bed... and now he really didn’t want to be reminded in whose bed he got – and he didn’t have either the time or the light to redo his braids in the morning. He had only checked them to see if they hadn’t come loose and that was it.

“Your Durin beads, laddie!” Balin exclaimed. “You’ve got them back!”

Every Dwarf close enough to hear spurred their ponies to have a look. From the circle of wide smiles and astonished eyes around him, Thorin was forced to accept that Balin wasn’t pulling his leg. Until now, he didn’t dare to look, afraid that it was a bad joke, or a trick of light fooling his friend’s eyes, but now he finally looked down on his shoulders. It was true. His Durin beads hung from the ends of his kingship braids as if he never lost them. Thorin rolled one between his fingers. The intricate pattern of the carving, the lightness and shine of mithril – it was impossible to replicate. The beads were real.

“Gandalf!” Thorin called, voice gruff and shaking only a little. “What do you know about this wizardry?”

But before Gandalf could open his mouth with some elaborately equivocal response that would undoubtedly contain the more words the less meaning they carried, they all heard a frantic shouting from a distance: “Wait! Wait!”

Thorin would know that voice anywhere.

Bilbo Baggins emerged from the trees behind them, completely out of breath. His curls were wild, probably combed with nothing save for the morning breeze, and his trousers were littered with wet grass as he must have taken some shortcuts to catch up with the Company. But his backpack was neatly packed and his clothes sturdy, an evidence of previous travelling experience, and his flushed face was beaming like the morning sun. Thorin could not look away.

Bilbo greeted the nearest Dwarves, bowing once or twice under a particularly heartfelt shoulder pat, and nodded to Gandalf who sat on his pony looking like satisfaction incarnate – if satisfaction could chuckle like a jackdaw, of course.

“I couldn’t let you lot go just like that – numbering eleven!” Bilbo explained between the curious questions of the Company, everyone shouting at once. “Dreadfully odd number. A dozen is much luckier.”

Thorin remained aside from the Company, still not trusting his voice, and tried his best to look as unimpressed as a leader should be with the tardy new addition to his company. The order to stop for breakfast all but forgotten, he motioned everyone to keep going.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” Bilbo told Balin as he walked by, loud enough for everyone to hear and stealing glances at Thorin all along. “It’s taken me a while to put my affairs in order. My cousin Drogo had the scare of his life when he woke to the deed to Bag End flying through his bedroom window...”  

“You gave Bag End over to Drogo?” Gandalf asked. “But my dear Bilbo, where do you want to go after the Quest?”

Bilbo shrugged. “Well, forgive me my honesty, but the odds are high that we’re marching to a dinner party with a Dragon and not as the guests, if you get my meaning–”

“Watch yer tongue!” shouted someone over the general uproar of laughter. Bilbo continued, unbothered by the interruption:

“– and in case we succeed, I rather thought I would like to go... where I belong.”

Everyone fell silent. Bilbo looked directly at Thorin, an unspoken question in his eyes. Thorin stared back, still holding onto the thunderous mask: _You made me think I’d lost you. Never do that again._

Bilbo smiled for both of them and tilted his head to the side. _I won’t. I promise._

Then Thorin noticed the sound – or the lack of thereof – of a group of Dwarves holding their collective breath. Dwalin was blushing and rolling his eyes at the awkwardness and Ori was scribbling something into his travel journal so fast that his pen nearly scratched through the paper, eyes bulging out of his head and mouth dropped open in profound awe.

Thorin smirked and declared: “Give our burglar a pony.”

In an instant, Bilbo’s mouth fell open and his smug smile transformed into a horrified grimace. “No–no, no, no, that won’t be necessary! I’m quite used to walking, thank you very much, I’m no more used to riding at such long– _whoa_!”

His rant was rather rudely but effectively silenced when Bofur and Nori picked him up from behind and deposited him onto a pony, smacking the pony’s rear for good measure and spurring it forward to fall in step next to Thorin. Bilbo levelled them both with a deadly glare and then he gave the same treatment to the leader of their company.

Thorin only smirked wider. “Do not underestimate yourself, Master Burglar. I remember you rode rather well last n–”

Bilbo’s indignant yelp sent Thorin into a fit of silent laughter, shoulders shaking and chest swelling with joy he hadn’t felt in years. Bilbo looked over his shoulder to check if anyone had heard. Sure enough, Balin looked all of a sudden like he was choking into his sleeve. This inexplicable health condition was miraculously resolved when a pouch of coins thrown by Dwalin hit him squarely on the head.

Bilbo shook his head and murmured something about the ridiculousness of Dwarves. Then he wriggled a bit in the saddle, winced and leaned a bit closer to Thorin:

“I kept the rose, you know.”

Thorin allowed himself a full blown smile, a rare enough occurrence to feel that pull on his face as something strange. “So you approve of my first gift?”

Bilbo rolled his eyes. “Of course I do. Do you approve of my third?”

Thorin flicked one bead with his fingernail, revelling in the silvery sound and still quite not believing that he had them back. “How?” he asked quietly.

Bilbo brushed down the grass from his trousers and adjusted his jacket buttons, obviously sorting through his words for the best way to tell the story. Thorin waited.  

“A couple of months ago, a messenger brought me a parcel from Rivendell. An accompanying letter from lord Elrond told me that one member of his household, Gilraen of the Dúnedain – the folk around Bree usually call them Rangers – had by chance found a priceless possession belonging to the line of Durin. She brought them to Elrond, and Elrond sent them to me, saying that he thought I would know what to do with them.”

Bilbo looked apologetic. “At first, I had no idea what he had meant with it but I knew better than to ask. That’s the thing with seeking counsel from the Elves: they often say both yes and no. In the end I figured that you’d probably been to Rivendell–” Thorin snorted loudly at that and Bilbo chuckled, “–and that you might still have been somewhere nearby. Only I had no idea where.”

They rode in silence for a while. The excited chatter of the Company behind them rose and fell like bubbling water in a hot spring, complaints at bets lost turning into jokes turning into songs.

Bilbo listened for a moment to an enthusiastic rendition of _Down with Smaug_ , Ori’s most successful composition, and then he remarked:

“I hope you know that my third gift wasn’t really the beads. They were always yours, only lost and now returned.”

Thorin thought on all the gifts in that unique courtship of theirs, gifts that weren’t what they seemed at first sight. He thought of a pattern of filigree flowers on a beautiful sword that had, quite unintentionally, granted to the Dwarves safe passage through Mirkwood when they needed it most. He thought of flecks of river gold like fiery snow in a paperweight ball that had been, in fact, a token of their new abode in Ered Luin – if not a home, then a place where they could survive and regroup. And at last, he thought of their only chance to reclaim Erebor, of Gandalf’s insistence that their Quest would fail if his burglar was not a part of it, and how Bilbo joined them this morning claiming to be their luck-wearer.

“It was never the beads,” Thorin agreed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bilbo’s beaming smile, and kept his gaze fixed forward where their future was once again bright with promise.  

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I didn’t make up the meaning of the blue rose. I originally wrote Thorin’s rose made of iron simply because he’s a Dwarf and live flowers are a bit beneath him. I knew that in flower language, a rose was generally the flower of love, and then I thought it better to check if perhaps its meaning wasn’t too forward. Imagine my surprise when I Googled out the exact meaning of a blue rose, since blue was the closest colour to the grey of iron. Talk to me about coincidences.
> 
> The song ‘Down with Smaug’ Ori composed for the Quest would be best known to the players of Skyrim. Just take the song Age of Aggression, substitute ‘aggression’ with ‘exile’, Ulfric with Smaug, Stormcloaks with Dragon, Skyrim with Durin and Sovngarde with Mahal’s Halls, and it works perfectly. I guess an epic song is an epic song in every ’verse.

**Author's Note:**

> So ends the first part of this story. It's been a brilliant writing experience and I cannot thank you enough for reading, commenting, liking and everything. (Seriously, I think if anyone recced it, I would melt into a puddle of happiness.) 
> 
> There's to be a sequel, episodes from the Quest - because their starting position is somewhat different, and seriously, if anyone thinks that Bilbo is going to let Thranduil keep Orcrist, they are sorely mistaken:-) 
> 
> You can subscribe to the series, or you can look for the updates on my [Tumblr. ](http://squire-reblogs.tumblr.com)
> 
> Comments are love, let me comment you back! :)


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